


there's something lonesome about you

by bette (ferns)



Series: Half Light [2]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Dehumanization, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Neglect, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Medical Experimentation, Medical Trauma, Metahuman Experimentation, Panic Attacks, Sort-of Episode Rewrites, Team Flash!Hartley, Team as Family, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-15
Updated: 2018-04-27
Packaged: 2018-08-15 03:19:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 132,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8040484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ferns/pseuds/bette
Summary: Cisco Ramon is alone.Bette is gone. He's been taken captive by a new Supervisor, with new Handlers and new Assets. There are new Rules, new things that he's supposed to and not supposed to do. So he tries. That's all he's ever done-try and hope for the best.[Second work in a series.]





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this is going to be the Long One you guys.
> 
> (note: the child neglect tag is touched on in one of cisco's vibes, the implied/referenced self-harm is not mentioned for any extended periods of time but could potentially be squicky or triggering, and the dehumanization tag is present throughout the entire fic.)

Cisco screamed as his eyes snapped open, peering around him into the darkness with his eyes wide and wild. Eiling was there, he would cut him open and break him because he had broken the Rules please please don’t he didn’t want to-please no, no no no no no, he didn’t-

He could hear the sound of footsteps running towards him and curled up away from what he thought was the front of the cell against the wall, shaking. No, he hadn’t meant to sleep without permission, he hadn’t meant to have a nightmare, he hadn’t seen anything, nothing at all, please don’t test him. Please. He didn’t want to be punished, please no.

The door to the cell opened and Cisco flinched away. “Please, I’m sorry, I won’t do it again, please don’t punish me!”

He knew that begging never worked, but maybe, just maybe…

“It’s okay,” a voice (a  _ Handler’s _ voice) said, and something rested against his back. Cisco pulled away and the Handler sighed. “Alright. I won’t touch you if you don’t want me to, and I definitely won’t punish you. But I heard you screaming and-”

“I’m sorry!” Cisco gasped. He knew that he was speaking without permission, but  _ please,  _ he didn’t want to be punished. Please. “I know th-that I fell asleep without permission! I know I br-broke the Rules! I’m sorry!”

“You didn’t break the rules,” the Handler said gently. They sighed and leaned back away from Cisco, much to the seventeen-year-old’s relief. “The rules here-they aren’t like that. Nobody will punish you if you do something wrong, don’t worry. Believe me, some of us… Some of us have made a lot of mistakes. But we aren’t going to punish them for it.”

Cisco tried to make himself as small as possible. “Please…”

The Handler stood up and Cisco braced for a beating, but instead they just walked away. “Wait here, I’m going to get something. Don’t leave the cell.”

Cisco nodded almost imperceptibly and stayed frozen. Wasn’t allowed to move, never allowed to move. The Handler was probably getting whips or knives or something else to punish him with. That was why they had left. When they came back, they would Order Cisco to sit still while they took off his shirt and then they would punish him for not being a good Asset and Disobeying Orders.

Please, no, he didn’t want… He knew that he deserved it, but… Please. Please, he didn’t want to be whipped or cut or punched today. Please.

But when the Handler came back, they weren’t holding any whips or chains or blades. Just… What looked like a cup. Maybe they were going to dump boiling water on him. Eiling did that a few times, and it had been okay at first before suddenly becoming blisteringly painful.

The Handler knelt down in front of Cisco and held the cup out. Maybe he was going to Order Cisco to hurt himself with it? Eiling had done that once, given him knives and told him to make careful slices up and down his own arms and legs, not letting him stop until his skin was covered in blood. “I made it pretty watery because I wasn’t sure if your stomach could handle it, but I brought you some hot chocolate. Do you want it?”

Was that an Order? It didn’t sound like one, which meant that Cisco didn’t know what to do with it. Obey it? As if it were a true Order? What was he supposed to do?

As though they (Cisco’s eyes had adjusted enough while the Handler was gone to see that it was the man in glasses who had brought him the tray of food and told him about Bette) had sensed his distress, the Handler sighed and gently set the cup down on the floor in front of Cisco. “Here. it’s not poisoned or anything, I promise. You’re allowed to drink it.”

That-that was permission. That was the Handler giving Cisco permission. Or at least he hoped so. Whatever was inside the cup smelled really good, and he could faintly feel the heat radiating off of it if he focused on sensing things hard enough. But that was using his powers without permission, which was not allowed. So Cisco had to pretend that he wasn’t actually using them. If the Handler knew, then he would be punished.

Cisco reached out tentatively and picked up the cup, holding it close to his face. It smelled… Wonderful. And he was thirsty, so so thirsty, and hungry, but…

He took a small sip and let out an involuntary gasp. It was  _ warm  _ and  _ nice  _ and  _ sweet,  _ even if it did burn his tongue a little bit. It certainly didn’t  _ taste  _ like poison.

“Oh, and I got this. I kept one around because sometimes I would stay late at the lab before the accelerator blew and I never got around to bringing it back…” He paused. “Home, I guess.”

The Handler held out something-a blanket? No, it couldn’t have been a blanket. Cisco wasn’t allowed to have blankets. This must have been something else. It had to have been something else, because blankets weren’t allowed. And if it  _ was,  _ on some small off-chance, really a blanket, then it had to be some sort of test or trick of some kind.

The Handler reached out toward Cisco and he jumped, pulling away and bringing the cup with him. The Handler paused. “It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you. I’m just going to put this over your shoulders, see?”

Cisco stayed as still as possible as the Handler reached out again and draped the blanket across his back, although it had to be folded and tucked because Cisco’s back was pressed against the back corner of the cell. As soon as he was satisfied, the Handler leaned back. “There you go. That’s not terrible, is it? Just a blanket.”

Cisco didn’t say anything and stayed completely still. The Handler paused and tilted his head to one side, glasses flashing in what dim light that there was coming from the still-somehow-open elevator.

_ “¿Hablas español?”  _ The Handler asked suddenly and Cisco couldn’t restrain himself from jumping slightly in place.

Cisco chewed his lip for a moment before nodding quickly. Maybe the Handler wanted him to translate something. Or maybe they just wanted to see if he remembered anything about Before and now he would be punished. Either way, if he didn’t tell the truth then he would be punished for telling lies, which meant that he had to say yes.

The Handler rocked back on their knees and Cisco wondered if they were going to hit him, but instead they just crossed their legs as they sat right back down again. Maybe he wasn’t satisfied, maybe he wanted him to tell him that he understood. Maybe he could speak-if it was just to answer the Handler’s question…  _ “Sí.” _

The Handler nodded encouragingly as Cisco pulled the blanket tighter around his shoulders and shivered. “What about-”

Whatever the Handler had been about to say was lost as Cisco’s vision flickered out of focus and all of his senses muted into blue. He was all-too-familiar with this feeling, the one that came when he had the visions of what could happen or had happened or  _ was _ happening. But that didn’t make them any easier to bear, especially because he was in a new place and-and-

_ The Handler was standing in front of him, arms crossed and eyes narrowed. Cisco jerked back when he discovered that he was practically on top of him, eyes wide when he realized that this was certainly going to get him punished if the Handler ever found out. _

_ “We’re really doing this?” The Handler asked with a sigh. _

_ Cisco spun around as he realized that he was talking to the Doctor, who was standing behind Cisco in the vision. She shook her head. “Dr. Wells said that it was the best place for him. And it is technically his fault that he’s like this, anyways, so… And you knew that this was happening. You complained for  _ hours _ on end about it until you saw a picture of him and admitted that he was kind of cute.” _

_ “This is a scientific establishment, not a hospital for someone who was unlucky enough to get struck by lightning coincidentally on the same day that the particle accelerator exploded,” the Handler grumbled, blueish face tinted pink. “And I said attractive, not cute. In a nerdy way.” _

_ “You’re a nerd, Hartley.” The Doctor rolled her eyes but kept the rest of of her face stony. “Stop judging your own kind.” _

_ Cisco followed their gazes to what looked like a bed  _ (stop no please it hurts it hurts please stop I want it to stop please please please)  _ and couldn’t stop himself from making a small sound of surprise. The Asset, Barry, was lying on the bed, monitors and machines attached to him. Cisco only vaguely recognized some of them; most were completely unfamiliar to the seventeen-year-old. _

_ What had they done to him? Had one of their tests failed? And now they were trying to fix him so that they could continue to do the tests before he died? What was going on? _

_ Suddenly, the Asset (Barry, he was Barry, Cisco had to remember that it was names and not numbers here or else he would be punished for his failure) started to buck, entire body thrashing and writhing. The Handler jumped at least two feet in the air, although the Doctor just widened her eyes and hurried to stand by the side of the bed. _

_ The Handler practically flew away from the bad bed and pressed a button on some sort of table shaped like a square, a desk maybe, speaking into something like a microphone. Cisco knew what microphones were; Eiling would use them with some modifications to torment him with loud sounds or to yell orders at him when he thought that his normal voice wouldn’t be as effective. _

_ “Dr. Wells,” the Handler said, and Cisco wondered if that was the name of the Supervisor, “he’s seizing again. We need you in the Cortex.” _

_ Cisco stood back and watched them move back and forth, the Doctor’s face icily calm while the Handler tried to stay out of her way. Even though it was a vision, Cisco could still hear their heartbeats, quick and restless inside of their chests the same way that Barry’s was still going too fast, far too fast. Dangerously fast. Asset-fast. _

_ A man in a wheelchair that the Doctor greeted with a “Dr. Wells, you’re here!” and the Handler greeted with a nod gave Cisco his first good look at the person that he could only assume was his new Supervisor. They certainly looked the part, eyes stern in their face and heartbeat steady despite the circumstances. Cisco automatically scurried backwards despite knowing that it was only a vision-and one of the longest ones that he had ever had at that. _

_ By the time Barry had stopped moving, heartbeat once again settling back into the oh-so-slightly too-fast beat that it had been when the vision started, the Handler had been pushed back by the activity of the Doctor and the Supervisor until he was standing right next to Cisco, eyes fixed on his Asset on the hospital bed. _

_ Cisco took deep breaths and tried to calm himself down. Nobody could see him, this was just one of many possibilities. Nobody in the visions could hurt him. He would be safe. He would be fine. Cisco would be okay. Nobody could touch him. _

_ The Handler suddenly pulled away from the wall and picked something up off of a nearby chair-a blanket, the same one that must have triggered Cisco’s vision. That was probably the reason why he had given it to the boy in the first place; to see if his powers would activate off of it. _

_ As Cisco watched, the Handler carefully spread the blanket over Barry’s still body. The Doctor and the Supervisor both raised their eyebrows, and the Handler shrugged. “What? I figured that-” _

Cisco gasped as he was flung out of the vision, the world momentarily spinning out of control before settling back into place with a bright golden flash.

The Handler was staring at him with what might have been concern, and Cisco braced himself to be asked what he had seen. “Are you okay? What just happened? Your eyes went all…” He waved his hand in front of his eyes and frowned. “Did you use your powers?”

Cisco cringed and nodded quickly. “I-I know I shouldn’t have done it without permission from you, Sir, and I’m really sorry, I know I broke the Rules, please don’t punish me, Sir, please, I don’t want to be punished, I’ll do better next time, please please please-”

“Whoa, whoa, it’s alright,” the Handler said. He raised his hands before dropping them when Cisco flinched sharply away. “You don’t need our permission to use your powers, especially if you can’t control them. Don’t worry. We won’t punish you. It’s okay. Calm down.”

Calm down. That was an Order. Cisco had to Obey Orders or else there would be consequences.

The seventeen-year-old nodded as fast as he could. “Y-yes Sir. It won’t happen again, Sir.”

The Handler wrinkled his nose. “You don’t have to call me ‘Sir’. Hartley is fine. Or just ‘Rathaway’ if you want, although I would  _ prefer _ Hartley."

Cisco bobbed his head. “Yes, Sir, Handler Rathaway.”

“Uh, okay, I mean… That’s not really better, but…” The Handler, Handler Rathaway, shrugged. He looked around and Cisco rubbed his shoulders. Handler Rathaway was probably looking for whips or blades or something that he could use to hurt him. Make him learn his place like a good Asset because he had Disobeyed and slept and screamed without permission. Handler Rathaway opened his mouth, and Cisco braced himself to hear something about how he should dump his drink on himself or scratch himself with his fingernails until he bled. “Come with me.”

Cisco blinked. Oh, so they were going somewhere else to do the punishment. He stood up obediently as soon as Handler Rathaway did the same, following him as he walked over to the elevator and motioned for Cisco to get in behind him.

Maybe they were going to the Pit. Cisco hated the Pit. It was dark and cold and scary and bad, but Eiling loved to remind him that he could be thrown in at any moment. Cisco didn’t know what kind of Pit they had here, but it was probably a lot bigger than the one at the other facility. Eiling hadn’t had to worry about a tall speedster (that  _ was _ the reason why Barry was an Asset, right?) escaping from his own Pit. These people did.

_ (Cisco gasped as the ground suddenly disappeared out from beneath his feet. Eiling had been leading him to an unknown location while he was blindfolded, one had on the shock collar around Cisco’s neck. He had thought that it would be some sort of test or punishment, but now he was lying gasping on a cold concrete floor with no air in his lungs. _

_ His hands fumbled to remove the blindfold, and by the time he did so he realized that he must have fallen down some sort of hole. But when he took of the blindfold he was greeted with the sight of smooth concrete walls stretching roughly ten feet above him, pressed close to his sides and scraping at his skin. _

_ “Stay silent,” Eiling Ordered from above him. “Every word that you say is another day that you’ll have to spend down here.” _

_ Cisco’s heart skipped a few beats. “Please, Sir, please let me out! Please!” _

_ “That’s seven words,” Eiling sneered. “Seven days. Think about what you’ve done. And if you say anything else, I’ll add it on to the time.” _

_ Cisco whimpered and folded up on himself. Maybe Eiling would forget that he was down there. Maybe he would die alone down here while starving and cold and thirsty. Maybe. But only if he was lucky enough.) _

The elevator opened, and Handler Rathaway led the teenager down through the halls. The new facility was big; even bigger than Cisco had thought. It seemed to be designed like a maze. Maybe that was how they stopped their Assets from escaping. Even if they managed to get away from the Handlers, they would get lost in the corridors and then be found again with the security cameras.

The Handler brought Cisco into a room, one that he hadn’t been in before. A smattering of objects on the table made the boy wonder if they wanted him to build something again. That was preferable to punishment. And it was definitely better than being thrown down into the Pit again.

Handler Rathaway gestured to a chair. “You can sit down in that if you want. I figured that you wouldn’t want to be in that cell. It’s not exactly built for comfort.”

Cisco did as he was asked and sat down in the chair, staying completely still and hoping that the Handler would tell him what he was supposed to do.

Instead of asking him to do anything, however, Handler Rathaway just leaned back over the table (there was a lamp beside the tools, already turned on) and started to work. (Cisco tried not to think about how interesting it was to watch, tried not to wonder what he was doing and whether or not he himself could have done it any better.)

Cisco waited for him to turn around with the pliers that he was using and Order Cisco to stay frozen while he ripped out his fingernails or broke his bones. To beat him with a hammer or a crowbar until he was bloody and broken. To slide a knife into his skin and work his way up with it until he reached something vital, and only then pull it out. To be punished for Disobeying.

Of course he would be punished. He was always punished. It was inevitable.

But it didn’t come. Instead, Handler Rathaway looked up at Cisco and blinked awkwardly. “You know, you don’t have to keep holding on to that cup. Unless you’re still drinking it.”

That was when Cisco realized that he was still clutching the cup that Handler Rathaway had given him close to his chest and hastily dropped it. The ceramic immediately shattered upon contact with the floor, and Cisco stiffened with a small sobbing sound. No no no no no, not only had he tried to take something that he wasn’t allowed to do, but he had accidentally broken it. And now he would be punished and hurt and tested and thrown in the Pit because he had been bad and broken the Rules.

Cisco jumped up and out of the chair as he flung himself backwards, pressing himself against the first wall that he could reach, shivering and folding in on himself. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, please don’t punish me sir, please please please I don’t want to be punished I’ll do better next time I’ll Obey all the rules please just don’t punish me please-”

“Hey, hey, I’m not going to punish you. I hated that cup anyway. Calm down, it’s alright.” The Handler got out of his chair and crouched down in front of Cisco. The teenager pulled away up into himself and let out a small sob.

“Don’t put me in the Pit, please, I don’t want to go into the Pit, I know it was all my fault, I’m sorry, please,” Cisco whimpered quietly into his arms as he used them to shield his face.

Handler Rathaway stiffened. “A Pit. Whoever it was that had you put you in a Pit.” He sounded angry, and Cisco curled away. “For how long?”

“T-two weeks,” Cisco answered quickly. That was an Order disguised as a question. Which meant that he had to answer. “The longest time was two weeks, S-Sir.”

Handler Rathaway leaned forwards and grabbed Cisco’s shoulder, and before the seventeen-year-old could stop himself he had been thrust into another vision.

_ Cisco’s eyes snapped open on an entirely different scene than the one that he had been looking at before. _

_ A boy (younger than him, he was pretty sure. Not entirely positive, because he didn’t know how old he was, but they looked younger. Or at least smaller) was curled up underneath a jacket, shivering because of an open window that his thin arms didn’t look strong enough to close without massive effort. _

_ Cisco waited for the Handler to come in and punish the other boy for something, because surely that was what this memory was about. If it even was a memory instead of simply just another possibility for something that  _ could _ have happened once but hadn’t. _

_ While he waited, Cisco looked around the room. When he came out of the vision, Handler Rathaway would probably want to know everything that he saw. _

_ The room was  _ big,  _ surprisingly so for what might have been a cell. They were painted white with blue accents on what might have been a bookshelf, and certificates and awards all hung on the walls. None of them looked familiar for any reason. They could have been in Latin for all Cisco knew. There were also some trophies on a shelf, and a couple of photos of a man shaking the hand of some important-looking people. _

_ The boy awoke with a start and a small yelp, and Cisco couldn’t hold in hold in his small sound of shock as he got a good look at his face. Glasses, hair that seemed like it might have been neat and tidy before it had been slept on, and a few freckles with some tear streaks running past them. The Handler. _

_ But that wasn’t right. Handlers were scary and mean and they hurt people. They didn’t wake up crying and shivering underneath a jacket that they then pulled up around their shoulders. _

_ They didn’t creep up to a door with bare feet and try to open it over and over again even after realizing that the door was obviously locked from the outside. They didn’t. They were Handlers, not Assets. They didn’t know how it felt. They didn’t- _

Cisco gasped sharply as he was abruptly pulled out of the vision. His head was ringing from two visions in such a short time, and his heart was pounding with fear and pain. Cisco had used his powers without permission, that was bad, now he would be punished. But he deserved it. He deserved it for Disobeying Orders and being a bad Asset. For using his powers on a Handler.

“What just happened?” Handler Rathaway asked, eyes narrowed. That was an Order that was said like a question. One that Cisco had to answer truthfully or else he would be punished painfully until he slipped into unconsciousness.

“I-I’m sorry,” Cisco whispered. “I d-didn’t mean to. I’m sorry I used my powers without permission, I’m sorry Sir, I’m sorry, it won’t happen again.”

“You used your powers?” Handler Rathaway frowned. “What exactly  _ are _ your powers, anyways? I know you took down Allen with them, but I could only hear over the comms and couldn’t see what was actually happening.”

Cisco trembled and chewed his lower lip. That was another Order-Question, which meant that he had to answer. But he didn’t really  _ know _ the answer. His powers, the very thing that made him an Asset in the first place, were mostly unknown to him. How they were activated, how they worked, the reason why he had them… Cisco didn’t know any of it. But if he didn’t say  _ something _ then he would be punished for it.

“I-I… See things sometimes,” Cisco said tentatively. “Wh-when I touch stuff. I-I didn’t mean to do it, I promise I didn’t. Please, I swear I didn’t.”

Handler Rathaway paused. “So… What did you see, just now? Did you see me, or something that I’ve done, or…?”

“I-I saw a kid, in a room, white and blue walls, lots of certificates and pictures,” Cisco recited, having imprinted all of the images into his memory in preparation for this very moment. “I don’t know where it was, I’m sorry Sir. But if I did then I would tell you, I promise, please don’t punish me. I know that I failed, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to fail, please.”   


“It’s fine, you didn’t fail. It’s fine.” Handler Rathaway frowned to himself and ran a hand through his hair before snapping out of his thoughts and peering down at Cisco. “Are you hungry?”

Cisco blinked a few times. “I a-already ate.”

“Yeah, but that was hours ago. It’s”-Handler Rathaway checked his watch-“1:15. And you ate around 7:00. Aren’t you hungry?”

Cisco felt like he was going to cry. “I already ate, I don’t…” He stopped himself. That was being contradictory. And that wasn’t allowed. Just like backtalk wasn’t allowed. Cisco swallowed thickly. “I’m not allowed.”

“You’re allowed,” Handler Rathaway sighed. “You’re-god, you’re always allowed. I guarantee it.” He sighed and stood up. “Well, I’m going to get something to eat. I forgot breakfast, lunch, and dinner, so it’ll have to be something big. I’m pretty sure that there’s stuff in the fridge if Allen hasn’t eaten all of it already. I’ll grab you something too, alright?”

Cisco stared after him as Handler Rathaway stood up and walked away, eyes wide. What was going on? He wasn’t allowed to eat. He had already eaten that day. There was no reason for him to eat  _ again.  _ (The loud noises of protest that his stomach was making seemed to disagree, but Cisco knew that those were normal. The only time that he  _ didn’t  _ have those was when he just eaten something. And even then they would probably come soon.)

The seventeen-year-old made a small sound of fear and curled up into himself as he heard footsteps coming back towards the room. If it wasn’t Handler Rathaway, then surely it would be someone else, someone equally dangerous and willing to hurt him if he did anything wrong. He had to stay still, had to stay quiet, had to show them that he had been a good Asset and stayed frozen in one spot while Handler Rathaway was gone. Had to show them that he knew how to Obey Orders.

Handler Rathaway pushed open the door with his elbow, both hands occupied by plates.

He set one of them down in front of Cisco along with a metal fork (weapons, he wasn’t allowed to have weapons, please, was this a test or a trick or a lie or-) and kept the other one for himself. The boy looked up at him, confused.

Handler Rathaway shrugged. “There was only pasta left. I’m pretty sure that it was Caitlin’s, but she won’t mind me sacrificing it for the greater good.”

Cisco sat completely still and watched the Handler eat his food, wondering if he wanted Cisco to serve him the other plate. Barry had been helping him earlier; maybe Cisco was supposed to do things for him now? Because Barry wasn’t there to do them? And Cisco hadn’t saluted earlier like Barry had… The way that they were supposed to. He had Disobeyed.

“Uh, you know that you can eat, right?” Handler Rathaway said after a moment. “I brought you that plate so that you could eat.” Cisco blinked owlishly at him and the Handler sighed. “You have my permission to eat. Go ahead, you’re allowed.”

Faster than the blink of an eye, Cisco reached out and grabbed the plate and pulled it toward him. He left the fork (not allowed, weapons weren’t allowed, and that included silverware) and used his fingers instead, shovelling the noodles into his mouth as fast as he could. Who knew when it would be taken away? When they would decide that he had eaten enough and snatch the plate from him? Cisco had to eat as quickly as possible if he wanted to actually eat anything at all.

“Slow down,” Handler Rathaway advised him. “The pasta isn’t going anywhere. And use the fork, it’s there for a reason.”

Cisco did as he was Ordered and stopped desperately trying to cram everything into his mouth as fast as physically possible. But he still ate fast, and before he knew it the plate was completely empty.

_ (“Aren’t you going to thank me, Asset 005?” _

_ Cisc gulped and ducked his head down into his shoulders. “Th-thank you Sir.” _

_ Eiling smirked and patted Cisco’s head, sneering at the way the boy flinched away fearfully. “That’s more like it. Good boy.”) _

As soon as he was finished, he felt horrible. ‘Caitlin’ (it couldn’t have been the Doctor) was probably another Asset-Barry had mentioned her name earlier when he had come back with the Doctor. He shouldn’t have eaten another Asset’s food. That wasn’t right; they were supposed to protect each other, not steal from one another. Even if it had been Handler Rathaway who gave it to him, he shouldn’t have taken it. But he had just been so hungry… That was no excuse, and he knew it.

Handler Rathaway was still eating, using the fork to twirl the noodles before putting them in his mouth. Cisco cowered away from his gaze, which was completely fixed on the teenager. It wasn’t like how Eiling or the Doctors looked at him, though. Not like he wanted to tear Cisco apart and then put him back together again with all of his flaws straightened out. And not like Bette had, like Assets would look at each other. More… In between. Curious and protective at the same time.

“So,” Handler Rathaway said after swallowing the last bite of their pasta, “are you still tired?”

Cisco shook his head and suppressed a large yawn. He wasn’t allowed to sleep, therefore he wasn’t tried. Never allowed to be hungry or thirsty or tired. “N-no Sir, Handler Rathaway."

Handler Rathaway smirked at him before frowning when Cisco tensed at the facial expression. “I’m pretty sure that that’s not true.”

Cisco trembled. Lying wasn’t allowed, but… He couldn’t tell the truth, either. He wasn’t allowed to be tired, and he wasn’t allowed to lie about it. What was he supposed to say? “N-no, I know that I don’t have permission from you, Sir, so I know that I’m not allowed to sleep. I won’t Disobey your Orders, Sir. I promise, Sir, I won’t.”

Handler Rathaway frowned even deeper. “You have my permission. It’s completely fine for you to sleep. Do you want to go back to that cell or do you want to sleep in here? I can get a blanket and a pillow. I’ll probably be here all night if you choose to sleep in this room.”

The seventeen-year-old froze. He wanted to go back to the cell, he didn’t want to sleep with a Handler watching him. Who knew what they would do? How they would hurt him? If they would drug him while he slept or punish him if he woke up screaming again? But how was he supposed to say that he wanted to go back to the cell? That was probably the wrong answer to this test.

“C-cell,” Cisco managed to stammer out.

Handler Rathaway nodded. “Okay. Just follow me back, alright?” Cisco stood up quickly, still holding the plate until the Handler motioned for him to put it down. “You can leave that here. I’ll have to clean up later anyways.”

Cisco quickly set it back down on the floor and followed Handler Rathaway through the facility back to the elevator, stopping only briefly in order to grab a pillow from where the Handler had stashed it because of the long nights that he spent at the lab both before and after the explosion happened. Cisco made sure that he didn’t get too close to the older man-who knew what the punishment for accidentally bumping into him would be?

_ (“I’m sorry, it won’t happen again, I’m sorry Sir, please don’t-please, please stop,  _ por favor,  _ please please please I won’t ever do it again-”) _

Handler Rathaway reopened Cisco’s cell and gestured for the boy to get in, which he did. The Handler set the pillow down on top of the crumpled blanket and sort-of smiled at Cisco. “I know it’s not very big and probably pretty uncomfortable, but you’re probably right about it being better than sleeping on the floor of my workspace.”

Cisco curled up in the corner. Didn’t the Handler know that this was a big cell? The biggest that Cisco had ever been in, in fact? This wasn’t small at all; far from it. It was actually rather roomy in Cisco’s opinion.

Handler Rathaway stepped backwards out of the cell and tapped something into the small control pad to close it, leaving Cisco alone. He turned around and started to walk away before awkwardly turning back around and rubbing the back of his neck. The Handler chewed his lip for a second before taking a deep breath. “Uh, goodnight, kid. You’re allowed to sleep, you know.”

Cisco watched him leave.

* * *

When Cisco woke up, there was a man standing outside his cell with a paper bag on the ground in front of him. He was tall, or at least much taller than Cisco. And that meant that he was probably a Handler or a Supervisor or maybe even a Doctor. But he didn’t look or feel like any of those things to Cisco. Maybe… Maybe he was an Enforcer. Like a Handler, an Enforcer would watch an Asset to make sure that they were doing everything properly and issuing Orders to follow, but Enforcers were there when Handlers weren't. And they usually had very creative punishments.

This man must have been one. Sent by the Supervisor (whom Cisco had yet to see outside of the vision the night before) to make sure that Cisco was behaving.

The man reached out and tapped something onto the thing that opened and closed the cell door, and Cisco quailed against the wall with a small whimper. But instead of coming in, the man just sat down outside the cell door and set his hands down by his sides, making sure that Cisco could see where they were.

“Hey, kiddo,” the man said softly. “Can you tell me your name? Hartley told me that it was Asset Number 005, but I’d like to know anyways.”

Cisco nodded quickly. “My Asset number is 005, Sir.”

The man winced. “Well, my name is Joe.” He paused for a moment before continuing in a gentle voice. “Can you tell me how old you are?”

“I-I don’t know, Sir,” Cisco answered honestly. When the man looked disappointed, Cisco rushed to say something. “I’m sorry, I’ll try to do better, I’ll try to remember better!” When Joe still didn’t say anything, Cisco’s voice took on a pleading tone. “Please don’t punish me, don’t put me in the Pit, I don’t want to go in there again, please-!” His voice broke and he let out a muffled sob. “Please.”

“Don’t worry, son, we won’t,” Joe assured him. “You won’t be punished. It’s okay that you don’t remember how old you are. It’s okay. We won’t punish you. I’ll make sure that nobody does, alright? It’s okay. None of us will punish you, ever. It’s okay. I promise it’s okay.”

Cisco stared at him, eyes wide with disbelief. There was simply no way that this wasn’t a trick. Nobody was ever nice without a reason. Well, nobody except for Bette (and maybe Barry too). Especially not an Enforcer. They would  _ never  _ be nice without wanting something in return.

But what would this one want? The last Enforcer or Handler that had ever been nice to him had wanted Cisco to stand completely still while they inspected him from all angles before Ordering him not to make a sound as they pulled off Cisco’s shirt and brought out one of the whips.

“Do you want some food?” Joe held the bag out and Cisco shuddered. Who knew what kind of poison was in there? But… He was hungry. Couldn’t let them know that, though. Joe pulled something out of the bag-what looked like a white container with a plastic spoon taped to the translucent lid. “I’m going to slide this across the floor to you. I won’t come any closer if you don’t want me to, alright?”

Cisco watched doubtfully as Joe did just as he had said he would, pushing the white container in his direction hard enough to slide it so that it came to rest a few feet in front of Cisco. The teenager looked at it. Did he have permission to grab it? To eat it if it wasn’t poison? (How was he supposed to test if it was? How could he tell if it would kill him or not? Cisco tried to reassure himself with the thought that they didn’t want him  _ dead.  _ They couldn’t do any tests on him if he was dead.)

“It’s yours,” Joe said after a moment of silence. “You can open it.”

Cisco tentatively reached for the container and peeled the lid off. Soup that was a cheery shade of orange-red. They would easily have been able to put drugs in that and he wouldn’t have been able to tell until he felt the affects of them later.

The teenager couldn’t help himself, though, and he reached for the spoon before stopping and remembering that he hadn’t been given permission to eat. Just to open the container. Cisco looked at Joe, silently begging him for permission that he knew he wouldn’t get. Why would he? There was no reason to give it to him, and it would probably be amusing for the Enforcer to see him be forced to stay in a cell with food that he couldn’t eat.

“It’s alright,” Joe sighed after realizing what the kid seemed to want. “You can eat it. You’re allowed to eat it.”

Slowly, Cisco picked up the spoon and took a careful sip of the soup. It certainly didn’t  _ taste  _ drugged, but… Still. It could have been. But he was hungry. But it could have been drugged. Hungry. Drugged. Hungry. Drugged. What was he supposed to decide? This may have been the last time that they decided to give him food for a long time, he couldn’t just pass it up. Even if it was drugged or poisoned in some way.

He started eating, not quite as fast as he had the night before but still pretty quickly. In no time at all, the cup was drained, and Cisco was left with an empty container and a dirty spoon.

Cisco looked at Joe with confusion, and the man nodded. “You can either slide them back over to me, or I can come into the cell and get them. Whichever one is more comfortable for you, son.”

Cisco trembled. He-he didn’t want Joe to come in and hurt him. And he didn’t want to slide it over, because he wasn’t allowed to do that. Joe might have thought that he was attacking and then marched in and hurt him. Whipped him beaten him kicked him punched him cut him strangled him bruises him broken him and left him lying on the floor of the cell. Shaking and shivering and spitting out blood. It had happened before; why would this time be any different?

Joe frowned slightly. “Okay. Would it be okay with you if I came in? I won’t touch you, I promise, I just want to get the trash. Would that be okay?”

Cisco flattened himself against the wall as well as he could. Joe stood up slowly and kept his hands at his sides, palms facing backwards. The man walked slowly forwards, telegraphing each step so that Cisco knew exactly where he was going. Cisco pushed the container away from him so that Joe wouldn’t have to get close before curling in on himself and closing his eyes.

The seventeen-year-old heard Joe get closer and closer before turning around and walking away. Only when Cisco was pretty sure that he wouldn’t be hit if he moved did he open his eyes and peek up between his arms to see that Joe was once again standing outside of the cell, empty container with the spoon in hand.

He hadn’t been hit. He hadn’t been punished. The Enforcer hadn’t hurt him.

That was when Cisco heard an all-too-familiar sound (tests reports Orders please) that grated on his eardrums. Someone was speaking over an intercom.

_ “Uh, Joe?” _ A scratchy sort-of familiar voice said. Barry, just… Distorted.  _ “Dr. Wells wants to come down there, ask our latest metahuman a few questions. Would-would that be alright?” _

Joe frowned for a moment before answering. “Fine. Just not too many people.”

Cisco rubbed his shoulders as his gaze fell on the wadded-up blanket and pillow in the corner. Maybe he wouldn’t be punished when Dr. Wells (the Supervisor, he remembered the name from the vision) came down to ask him questions. Because surely those questions would be about his powers, and he didn’t know the proper answer to those. He never did. But they would ask Cisco anyways, ask him and then shake their heads when he couldn’t answer correctly before Ordering him to submit to punishment.

“Why didn’t you sleep with those?” Joe asked, and Cisco’s eyes snapped up too look at him before immediately lowering back down again as he remembered that making eye contact was a sign of Disobedience. Joe frowned again.

(He’d dealt with child abuse cases before, and this was clearly one of them. Of course, a little bit different because this child was a metahuman who seemed to have been given a  _ number  _ instead of a  _ name,  _ but that just made it a different kind of abuse.)

Behind Joe, the elevator door opened, and Cisco watched nervously as four people stepped out; the Doctor, Handler Rathaway, Barry, and the same man in the wheelchair from his vision, who must have been the Supervisor.

Joe turned around and sighed. “Barry, what did I say about not bringing too many people?”

Cisco waited for his fellow Asset to cringe and cower and apologize and maybe even beg not to be punished for his mistake, but it didn’t happen. Instead, Barry just smiled sheepishly and shrugged his shoulders. “They all wanted to come.”

Joe shook his head slightly, and suddenly Cisco’s eyes landed on… A holster. That was a holster. No gun, he didn’t have a gun in it, but that meant that somewhere there  _ was _ a gun. A gun that Joe could use to hurt him if he didn’t behave and answer all of the questions properly. No no no no no no no. Please, he didn’t want to be shot again, didn’t want to be hit and beaten just because he hadn’t reacted fast enough. Please.

Barry slipped around Joe (no, didn’t he realize that that was bad, that he would get hurt, didn’t he realize that Assets weren’t allowed to do anything at all without express permission?) and stood right in front of Cisco’s open cell door, smiling kindly down at him. “Hey, how did you sleep? Hartley said you were up last night.”

Cisco looked beyond him at the Handler, the Doctor, the Supervisor, and the Enforcer who were all watching him. What was he supposed to say? Was this a test? Was he supposed to answer the question, even though it hadn’t been asked by a Handler, a Doctor, or a Supervisor? What was he supposed to do? Could he speak? Was he allowed to answer without punishment? He just… He didn’t know.

After a moment of long silence, Handler Rathaway sighed. “It’s okay. You can answer.”

Cisco risked taking his eyes off of the others to look at Barry. “F-fine.”

The Asset smiled and nodded, although it didn’t quite reach his eyes.

The Supervisor suddenly wheeled forwards, and Cisco pressed even tighter against the wall of the cell. Luckily, he didn’t actually come in, and instead just stayed about a foot away from where the doors were closed. Cisco was thankful for that, even though he knew that it wouldn’t last for much longer if he didn’t answer all of the questions quickly and correctly and properly.

“What can you tell me about your powers?” The Supervisor inquired after a moment of complete silence. “How do they work, to the best of your knowledge?”

Cisco knew this, or at least knew part of it. And he had said “to the best of your knowledge”, which meant that he had to explain as much of it as he knew. Which wasn’t very much. “S-sometimes, when I touch people or th-things, I get visions. Of something that happened. Or might have happened, or is ha-happening, or w-will happen. They’re called Possibilities. Or at least that’s what Ei-what  _ they  _ called them. I-I can also make blasts that come out of my hands. Or-or any of my skin, really. I think. Please, that’s all I know, I’m sorry, that’s all I know-”

“Okay,” Joe interrupted him, and Cisco cowered back. “That’s okay. You don’t have to know anything else. That’s fine. It’s fine for you to just know that much.”

No, no it wasn’t fine, that meant that he had failed, and now he would be punished for that failure, please, no, he didn’t want-please, he didn’t want to be punished.

“Please don’t put me in the Pit,” Cisco blurted out before realizing that he hadn’t had any permission to speak. “I promise I’ll do better, I’m sorry for speaking without permission, just please, please, I don’t want to-I’ll be good, I promise, just please don’t put me in the Pit. Not again. I don’t want to go in the Pit, please no.”

“The Pit?” Handler Rathaway closed his eyes for a moment. “The same one that you mentioned last night?”

Cisco nodded quickly, hoping that this wasn’t just a trick to get him to tell them how to hurt him the most.

Handler Rathaway scowled deeply. “Well, we aren't going to do that, alright? We aren't going to put you in a Pit, and we aren't going to punish you. Got it?”

Lie. Trick. Test. It had to be. They wanted him to let his guard down and when he least expected it they would hurt him. 

But he had to answer. “Got it” was an Order, and if he didn't answer Orders then he would be punished and beaten and tested and hurt. 

“Y-yes Sir,” Cisco stammered, nodding as fast as he could. This was their way of telling him to stop begging. Sniveling. Eiling had hated the pleading. Cisco should have known that it would have been the same way here. “I'll t-try to do better, Handler Rathaway Sir.”

Handler Rathaway and the Doctor (Not-Asset-Caitlin?) exchanged glances. Barry crouched down and took a small step in Cisco's direction.

“Hey, ah, you know that you don't have to call anybody ‘Sir' here, right?” Barry said softly. “It's okay to just call them by their names. You-you won't get in trouble for it, I promise.”

Cisco didn't say anything. He wasn't supposed to speak unless he had been spoken too, and being spoken to by another Asset didn't count. It never counted. He whimpered quietly before biting his lip. That didn't count as talking, did it? What if it did? Was he still allowed to do it?

He tried to curl up in a small ball, ducking his head down between his knees and hugging his legs up to his chest. Cisco curled away from the front of the cell where all of the people were, knowing that they were going to march in at any minute and punish him for being disobedient and a bad Asset. Bad bad bad. He had spoken without permission, accidentally broken several Rules, and who knew what else?

Something soft touched his back, and Cisco peered up through the small gap in his knees to see what it was.

Barry had draped the blanket over him (he hoped that it was Barry. Who else would have been quick enough to get in and out of the cell so fast without him noticing?), the same one that Handler Rathaway had given him the night before. Cisco's fingers clenched on the edges and he chewed his lower lip.

“Why didn't you sleep with this?” The speedster asked gently.

Cisco shook his head. “N-not mine. Not allowed.”

No no no. That had been  _ speaking without being spoken to _ , again, that had been breaking the Rules. Now they could punish him. Now they could hurt him. No no no please no. He didn't want-but he couldn't beg. They wouldn't like it if he begged. They hadn't before.

“No, no, you're allowed,” Barry said, green eyes wide. “You're allowed. It's yours, that's why it was given to you.”

“M-mine?” Cisco couldn't stop himself from speaking even though he hadn't been allowed.

“Yours.” Barry nodded sympathetically. He paused for a moment. “Are you hungry? Do you want something to eat? I know that Joe just gave you some soup, but…”

Ah. Barry must have been a new Asset, one that didn't know all of the Rules yet. Didn't know that he wasn't allowed to eat without being given permission from one of the Handlers or from the Supervisor.

“Barry.” The Supervisor had been the one to speak, and Cisco looked past his fellow Asset at the man. He was looking at Barry sternly, and Cisco wondered how he was going to punish him for Disobedience. Surely that was what was going to happen. Then the Supervisor turned their attention back to Cisco, and the boy curled away against the wall as much as he could. “Do you know who had you?”

An Order-Question. But… Eiling wouldn't have wanted him to say anything. Not to these new Handlers. He would just have to take the punishment for not answering.

After a moment of silence, the Supervisor sighed. “Alright. Can you at least tell us how long you were there?”

“I-I don't know Sir,” Cisco answered honestly. Before the Supervisor could say anything else he continued quickly. “I  _ th-think  _ I was there for seven or eight years. B-but I'm not sure. I'm sorry Sir. I don't know.”

Barry's eyes went wide. “Seven or eight  _ years?!”  _ He looked around. “But… The particle accelerator only went up a little over nine months ago… How…”

The Doctor closed her eyes. “Eight years,” she whispered, her voice wavering. “You were… Wherever it was that you were… For  _ eight years.” _

Cisco closed his eyes. He didn’t know if he had answered correctly. It didn’t seem like he had, and now he would be punished because he had failed whatever test had just been set for him. Please, he didn’t want-he didn’t want to be punished, please-

“Hey,” Barry said, seeming to realize that he was in distress. The Asset crouched down and reached forwards before regretfully pulling his hand back and sighing. “Hey, hey, it’s okay. It’s not your fault that you were captured, it’s alright. You’re safe here, okay? Nobody will ever hurt you here.”

How could Barry say that? He was an Asset, he was someone who could be used as a weapon. Surely he was punished for his mistakes too, surely he had been beaten and whipped and tested and experimented on and cut open. Surely he was, well, an Asset. Barry had powers. Didn’t he realize how dangerous it was for anybody at all to know about them?

After a moment of silence, Handler Rathaway spoke up. “Did you have your powers? When they took you? Or did they want you for some other reason?”

Cisco blinked up at him. “F-for my powers.” As the Handler nodded thoughtfully but didn’t say anything, Cisco realized his mistake. His eyes widened and he let out a small gasp. “I-I’m sorry! I forgot to say Sir! I didn’t mean to, Sir, I just forgot, I’m sorry!”

Joe swore softly under his breath, although Cisco still caught it easily with his enhanced hearing. “It’s alright, son, we aren’t going to do anything. People forget things. You won’t be punished for it. It’s okay. We aren’t going to hurt you.”

Lie trick test assessment experiment lie lie lie trick trick experiment test it had to be it had to be it had to be. Please. He didn’t-he didn’t want this. Cisco had been so, so close to freedom, only to have it ripped away from him along with Bette. Bette. Bette. He hadn’t… He hadn’t even gotten to say goodbye to Bette. They’d killed her before he had had a chance to, and now they were probably going to kill him, and he didn’t want… He didn’t want to die. (Before, before he had. Cisco had entertained the thought before. There were plenty of times when he could have done it. But now…)

Cisco tried to take deep breaths to calm himself. Eiling had  _ hated  _ it when he was like this. Said that it messed with the data for the tests. And that would mean that they would have to redo them later. If the data was skewed in any way, it would have to be corrected. Cisco would have to be corrected. Which meant that he had to calm down. Cisco kept trying to take deep breaths, but it was hard, so hard, and it felt like there was a crushing weight on his chest. Like he couldn’t breath.

“It’s okay.” Something touched Cisco’s shoulders and spine and he jumped away, hitting against the wall as he tried to get as far from them as possible in the small cell. He recognized Barry’s voice (and heartbeat, too fast and too steady and too safe he didn’t-nothing was safe, nothing was steady, he had to get out before they hurt him). “It’s alright. Just breathe. Deep breaths. Breathe with me, okay? Can you do that for me?”

No no no no this was a test a trick a lie-

Cisco clapped his hands over his ears and tried to block out the sounds of heartbeats and breathing and air being pumped into the cell (it could be replaced with water drugs poison kill him with the touch of a button or a flick of a switch). Everything was too  _ loud  _ and too  _ much  _ and he had to-please, he had to-everything was  _ so loud.  _ He let out a small whimper as his powers latched onto the floor beneath him and sent small tremors through it.

“Whoa, whoa, it’s alright, just breathe, okay? Can you look at me?”

Cisco didn’t dare to open his eyes. He would be hurt if he did so, he would be beaten and tortured and no no no please-

_ (“Asset, get over here! On your feet, now!” _

_ “Y-yes Sir, I’m sorry Sir, I didn’t mean to-”) _

He didn’t want-

_ (“No excuses, Asset 005.”) _

Please-

_ (“If you struggle, it will just be worse on you, brat.”) _

He didn’t want-

_ (“You’re a murderer. Nobody would ever care about you. Your only purpose is to be an Asset to me. You are nothing but a weapon. A tool. An  _ Asset.  _ And if you ever think that you will be anything more, then you are sorely mistaken. Is that understood?” _

_ Silence. _

_ “Is. That. Understood.” _

_ “Y-yes, Sir. It is. I’m sorry. I’m an Asset, a tool, nothing more than a weapon to be used. Not a real person. I’m sorry. I’ll try to do better next time, Sir.”) _

Not again, please, not again-

_ (“Okay, I won’t come near you if you don’t want me to, okay? Don’t worry. I’m not like Eiling, alright? I’m like you. My name is Bette. Do you want to tell me your name? It’s okay if you don’t.”) _

Cisco let out a small whimper. No no no no no-

_ (“You aren’t human, Asset 005. You aren’t Francisco Ramon. You’re mine. And don’t you forget it.”) _

Not-

_ (“Asset! What are you doing?”) _

Please-

_ (“That’s what you get for trying to escape, Asset 005. You belong to me. And if you ever did manage to somehow find your way out of here, I would find you. And I would make sure that you  _ never _ tried to do something like that again. Understood?”) _

Never-

_ (“We’ll have to see if your powers work when there’s something stitched up inside of you, won’t we?”) _

Again.

Cisco’s eyes snapped open, flaring gold and silver, much to the surprise of the other people around him.

The last thing that he saw was Handler Rathaway, Joe, and the Doctor all taking a step toward him in unison, bodies tinted metallic and blue.

And then his world was plunged into blissful, merciful darkness.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "It is not what we have, but _who_ we have in our lives that counts." --Anonymous

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is horrendously long. don't say i didn't warn you about how long this fic is gonna be.

When Cisco blinked open his eyes, he was on a hospital bed.

No, no, this couldn’t be happening, this couldn’t have been happening _again,_ please god no he didn’t want to-no-please-

Cisco tried to get away, noticing with some surprise that there were no straps on his arms or waist, only what looked like an IV (drugs poison drugs poison) in his wrist. He automatically reached to pull it out as he threw himself off of the hospital bed. No no no no they had cut him open again this couldn’t be happening please oh no no no he couldn’t never again-

Someone grabbed his shoulders. “Calm down, alright? You’re going to send yourself into another panic attack. Just breathe, alright? Can you do that for me? Can you breathe for me?”

Cisco struggled to Obey the Order while still attempting to escape from the _(bad please no cut slice pain pain pain)_ bed. He kicked out weakly and felt his foot hit something (hit some _one)_ , and he automatically curled away. Now he would be punished as well as tested, now something bad would happen, please, he hadn’t meant to-he hadn’t meant to do anything wrong, please don’t punish him. Please.

“I’m going to get up on the bed with you, alright?” Barry’s voice sounded unsure, and that was how Cisco knew that there were going to be tests on the way. “I know that it’s not exactly built for more than one person, but I think you could use the company. So I’m going to get up there, okay? I wanted to let you know before I did anything.”

Cisco kept trying to escape the bed. If he just kicked out a little stronger, thrashed a little bit more… Maybe. Maybe he would be able to-

The other body that curled around his, away from the IV that had to have been keeping him weak and sluggish and compliant, caught him completely off guard.

For a moment Cisco stayed as still as he could, eyes closed but listening hard. Too-fast safe heartbeat. Barry. Which-which meant that he was safe, right? Barry was an Asset too, he was safe. He wouldn’t hurt Cisco, would he?

But… But Barry had been the one to bring him to this new facility. Why would he do that if he wasn’t planning on helping the Handlers and Doctors and Supervisors hurt him? And Barry might have been the one to kill Bette. Under the Orders of the Supervisor almost definitely, but he had still done it. Even if Handler Rathaway had said that Eiling had been the person who murdered Bette, Barry could have easily handed her over to him knowing full well what he would do when he got her.

Cisco shuddered, the motion accidentally sending small ripples of power trickling through the air and shaking the tools on the small side table attached to the bed.

The tools!

Cisco stared at them, suddenly finding it hard to breathe again. He could see perfectly polished scalpels, forceps, and small but still sharp scissors. He didn’t see a bone saw (this time), but he could see bandages and other objects like cotton balls and swabs and other _bad painful no_ things that they would surely use to hurt him, surely, and if they didn’t use them on him they would use them on Barry and force Cisco to watch what happened.

“Oh, hey, no, don’t look at that stuff.” Cisco felt Barry shift around him and pull him back down onto the bed. Cisco hadn’t even realized that he had been trying to escape again-or that he had even stopped in the first place for there to be an _again._ “Don’t look at that, okay? All of that’s just there so that Caitlin can grab it easily if I get hurt. We won’t use them on you, I promise. Don’t look at all that stuff. You’ll just send yourself into another panic attack.”

The seventeen-year-old trembled, trying not to look at the small side table despite how much he wanted to.

“There you go,” the other Asset said encouragingly. “Nothing to be afraid of here. We don’t hurt people, we help them. Especially when they can’t control their powers like you.”

 _(“How long have you had your powers? When did Eil-when did_ he _give them to you?” Bette asked quietly. “If you don’t know the answer then you don’t have to tell me, but if you do…”_

_“A-as long as I can remember.” Cisco didn’t mention that he wasn’t allowed to recall anything about Before. Maybe he had had them then. He wasn’t allowed to know.)_

“How about we play a game?” Barry suggested, and Cisco stiffened. Games were bad. They were tests in disguise, and if Cisco lost then he would be punished. Games weren’t allowed when they were between Assets, either. It was a form of Disobedience, and worth being locked up in the Pit for. Didn’t Barry know that? Know that games were bad and wrong and scary?

But how was he supposed to refuse? This could be another test, one that was framed like a question. How did he know if he was breaking the strange new Rules of this facility?

“I ask you a question,” Barry continued, “and then you get to ask me one in return. I have to answer truthfully, and so do you, but if you want to refuse to say anything then you can, okay? Do you want to do that?”

Cisco was well aware that he didn’t actually have a choice in the matter, but maybe… Maybe if he answered correctly then he wouldn’t be punished or tested. It was a long shot, but…

“Al-alright.” Cisco looked down at his hands. “I-I’ll play.”

Barry grinned at him. “Great! Do you want to ask the first question, or should I?”

Ah, he knew the right answer to that! “You can go first.”

“Okay, hmm…” The other Asset hummed to himself as he thought of a question to ask the teenager. “Oh, right! Can you tell me your name?”

Why did everyone here want to know his name? Even the people and Assets who _knew_ that he only had a number wanted to know. That wasn’t right. He’d already told them that he didn’t have a name. (Or, in Barry’s case, that he did, but wasn’t willing to share it.) So why did they still want to know? Was it some sort of strange repeated test to see if he would always answer the same thing?

“Asset Number 005,” Cisco said again, just to be safe.

Barry’s face fell before he forced it back into a smile. “What about you? Any questions that you want to ask me?”

Cisco studied the speedster for a moment before realizing something. The marks that he should have had on his neck from the collar weren’t there. No chafing, no scarring, nothing to reveal that there had ever been anything there whatsoever. Strange. Maybe, because Barry was so new, they hadn’t had time to collar him yet? Or they were just waiting for the right time to do it? In any case, Barry didn’t have a collar, and Cisco wanted to know why.

“Wh-where’s your collar?” He asked, reaching up to touch his own neck with shaking fingers. “Why don’t you have one?”

“Collar?” Barry frowned in confusion, and Cisco hoped that he hadn’t said anything wrong. “What do you mean?”

“Y-your collar,” Cisco tried to explain. “S-so that the Handlers can control you when you aren’t at the facility or when you’ve Disobeyed Orders. It-it usually electrocutes you. Don’t you have one?”

“No!” Barry’s eyes were wide and his voice was loud. Cisco flinched, and Barry managed to force himself to calm down slightly. “No, I don’t have a collar, and you won’t get one, understand? Nobody here will _ever_ do that to you. _Never._ I promise.”

Cisco didn’t believe that. It was something that simply couldn’t be true. _Of course_ he would be collared. And Barry would be too; he just didn’t know it yet. He actually seemed to _trust_ the Handlers and the Doctor and the Supervisor. Barry certainly didn’t follow the Rules around them like he should have. Cisco wondered when they would turn on him. Surely they would, after all. They were just biding their time and waiting for the right opportunity to strike.

How had they even captured Barry in the first place? It would have had to have been recently. If it had been earlier then he would have already been conditioned to follow all Orders unconditionally. They would have made it so that every time he so much as moved without permission from one of them he would be beaten. They would have tested him by now. Cut him open and studied his organs the way that they had Cisco’s.

There had to be some method of control, however. Even if Barry didn’t appear to know about it. Maybe it was that red suit. Or maybe they wouldn’t give him food or water unless he told them what they wanted and did everything that they asked. Did he think that that wasn’t normal? Or was he as used to it as Cisco was? Barry certainly seemed to think that it wasn’t the way that Assets should be treated.

Cisco’s stomach turned as he realized something. Barry caught other Assets and brought them into this new facility. Cisco himself, Bette, and the person that he could hear screaming and swearing all night long in the neighboring cell. Would… Would they make him do that? No, no, he couldn’t. Assets were supposed to protect each other. Weapons had to stick together, after all. Cisco didn’t know if it was possible for him to catch another Asset, or if he would be mentally and physically unable to.

“Are you okay?” Barry asked, breaking him out of his thoughts. Cisco jumped and stared at the older man with brown eyes that momentarily flashed silver. “I mean, I asked you a question and then you didn’t respond and just kept, uh, staring off into space, so…”

Cisco flinched back again. He’d missed a question, oh no, now he would be punished, Barry would tell the Handlers and then they would punish him. “Wh-what was the question? Please, don’t punish me, I just want to answer so that-please, don’t tell the Handlers or the Supervisor. I’ll answer, I promise I’ll answer, just tell me what the question was, please!”

Barry reached out and awkwardly squeezed Cisco’s shoulder, wincing at the boy’s cowering. “It’s fine, there’s no need to get so worked up, okay? I space out sometimes, it’s okay. Don’t worry about it. I was just wondering if you knew where you were. Like, right now. About the lab.”

Cisco shook his head. “No, Sir. I’m sorry Sir.”

It would probably be safer for him to keep calling Barry ‘Sir’ for now. That way he wouldn’t get angry and tell the Handlers that Cisco had been Disobedient.

“You don’t have to call me Sir. You don’t have to call anybody Sir. And you’re at STAR Labs.” Barry leaned back and sent a look behind Cisco in the direction of the door.

The boy automatically followed his gaze. Cisco could hear that there was nobody there, or at least nobody with a heartbeat, but what if there was some sort of rack of tools? What if Barry was keeping Cisco distracted while the Doctor and the Handler got everything set up to do all sorts of bad tests on him? That would explain why they had given him the IV…

The IV. He had to get it out. Barry had stopped him before, but maybe if he moved fast enough he could tear it out before the speedster noticed what he was doing.

No such luck. The second that Cisco snatched at the tube in his hand, Barry grabbed his wrist as firmly but gently pulled his hand away. “No, don’t do that. It’s there to help you feel better. You’re very dehydrated and you need nutrients. Since you haven’t been drinking or eating most of the stuff that we’ve been leaving for you”-Barry send Cisco a disapproving look and the teenager shrank back-“you need to have it in. I know that it’s, uh, uncomfortable, trust me, but it isn’t going to hurt you.”

‘Trust me.’ Hah. The only person that Cisco had trusted aside from the people from Before _(not allowed to remember stop bad stop)_ was Bette. And now… And now Bette was gone. Which meant that he didn’t trust anybody anymore. He couldn’t.

_(“Put him down, you bastard!”_

_Cisco heard the woman who had been forced to live in the same cell as him (Beth? Betsy? Bette, it was Bette. She had said that her name was Bette) let out a loud shout of anger and braced himself for a blow. Eiling might take out Bette’s punishment on him, if he didn’t decide to simply hurt them both the way that he usually chose to._

_Something collided with Eiling and Cisco by extension, sending the teenager tumbling to the floor while Eiling lashed out and punched Bette square in the jaw. The woman stumbled backwards and attacked again, this time kicking out at Eiling’s stomach. Her bare foot made contact and Cisco closed his eyes, scuttling backwards into the corner of the cell._

_It would be okay. It would all be okay. This was a dream. Bette hadn’t actually tried to attack Eiling. Hadn’t tried to defend Cisco. This was a dream, all a dream, and when he woke up he would still be in the cell, waiting for whatever new test Eiling and his scientists had devised for him._

_It wasn’t a dream.)_

The sound of footsteps accompanying heartbeats, ones that didn’t belong to Barry, snapped Cisco out of his thoughts.

“We got tired of watching over the security cameras,” Handler Rathaway said from behind Cisco.

The boy tensed and bowed his head, squeezing his eyes shut. That meant that they had heard. That meant that they had heard when he had been Disobedient.

Now they would-now they would-

“Hartley,” Barry said reproachfully, and Cisco’s head snapped up. Assets weren’t supposed to talk to Handlers like that. It was like getting down on your knees and asking for punishment. “I just got him to calm down a little and now you’re making him anxious again.”

Handler Rathaway sighed. “Well, Caitlin doesn’t want you on the bed with him.”

“I don’t,” the Doctor’s voice agreed. Cisco kept his gaze trained on the floor. “You’re going to end up pushing him off or something. Get off the bed, Barry.”

The Asset Obeyed with a small groan of assent, and Cisco let out a small sigh of relief. He didn’t want to think about the kinds of punishments that they would inflict with all of the medical tools so close by.

Then the Doctor marched up to him, and Cisco stiffened. He tucked his hands behind his back, ignoring the tugging sensation on the back of his hand where the IV was, bowed his head, and waited for either Orders or punishment. Or, most likely, for a test to begin.

_(“Stand still, Asset 005,” Eiling Ordered as he started to slowly circle around the small teen. Cisco Obeyed, ignoring the pain that coursed through his entire body. Everything hurt, everything ached and what didn’t felt like it was on fire, but he had to Obey Orders or else his next punishment would be even worse. Cisco gritted his teeth in pain and surprise as Eiling took a step forwards and grabbed his chin roughly, inspecting the two black eyes that the general had delivered._

_Eiling_ tsked _and shook his head slowly. “Maybe if you were faster about Obeying Orders this wouldn’t have happened, creature. You’ll have to do better next time. Understood?”_

_“Y-yes Sir,” Cisco rasped, tongue and throat dry with fear and dehydration. “I know I failed, Sir.”_

_Eiling slapped the back of Cisco’s head hard, and the boy accidentally stumbled forward a few paces. “Do you, now? Because if you did, then surely it won’t ever happen again.”_

_“No, Sir, it won’t. I promise it won’t.” When Eiling didn’t say anything, Cisco grew more desperate. “I promise, I won’t, I’ll be good, I’ll Obey your Orders no matter what, please don’t punish me, I know that I failed-”_

_“Stop whining, brat,” Eiling spat, and Cisco snapped his mouth shut. Eiling nodded to one of the guards who was standing just inside the door, watching with a small, cruel smile on her face. “Meriweather!”_

_“Yes, Sir?” The guard replied dutifully, never taking her eyes off of Cisco._

_“Come over here and show our little Asset what happens when he doesn’t Obey properly,” Eiling instructed._

_Cisco shivered as Meriweather’s face split into a thin smile. “It would be my pleasure, Sir.”)_

Cisco shuddered and tried to lean away from the Doctor as much as possible without actually moving from his position. Just because she hadn’t actually said that she wanted him to stay in one place didn’t mean that she didn’t want him too. Didn’t mean that she wouldn’t hurt him for moving. Sometimes, Eiling’s unspoken Orders were the ones that caused Cisco the most pain.

Like the ones that told him to stay frozen for hours. Or to stay as silent as possible when the _(bad knife bone pain please)_ Doctors were working on things inside of his body.

That one was usually impossible to Obey, but if Cisco let himself scream then he would be punished severely on top of the testing. On top of the other pain. On top of the horrible agony singing through his veins.

Cisco would scream and beg and plead and sob anyways. He had to. Anything to get them to stop hurting him.

But instead of raising her voice and shouting at him for moving without her consent, the Doctor spoke to him in a soft tone. “Can you take a couple of deep breaths for me? I want to listen to your lungs if that’s alright with you.”

Cisco knew what that really meant. It meant that she wants to cut him open and study his lungs. See if they’re different. Not-the Doctor presses a cold metal stethoscope against his chest, the same way that she did before when she checked over him. He struggled to take a few deep breaths, still waiting for her to hit him or scold him for something, but it didn’t happen.

Instead the Doctor smiled and took a step back, taking the stethoscope with her. “Good job.”

Good job? He did good for once? But-but he was just breathing… Just following her Orders. Maybe _that_ was what she was praising him for. It had to have been. Cisco didn’t get any praise for anything, much less something as mundane and simple as breathing. It had to have been because he followed Orders properly like any good Asset would.

_(“Stop screaming, creature.” Eiling shoved a gag made of cloth into Cisco’s mouth and slapped him hard across the face. “You’re distracting the Doctors.”)_

Cisco picked weakly at the IV drip behind his back, making the Doctor frown slightly at him. “Don’t do that, please. You’ll end up hurting yourself even more. And it’s there to help you feel better, not worse. You need to eat more, you’re much too thin.” She frowned even deeper. “We weighed you while you were unconscious because we didn’t know how you would react if we asked if you wanted to do it. You’re too skinny, too underweight, too dehydrated… Too malnourished in general.”

The boy kept looking down at the floor. Didn’t the new Doctor realize that that was perfectly normal for him? He didn’t _have_ any weight. He had bones. He didn’t have a stomach, he had ribs. Cisco was normal for an Asset. Didn’t this Doctor know that? Maybe she was new, like Barry was. Maybe she didn’t know how much was supposed to be given to Assets. Yes, that was the only possible explanation for it.

Handler Rathaway nodded and crossed his arms. Cisco wondered if he was going to be taken to a separate room for punishment today. Maybe they didn’t want to get blood on their nice new-looking tools. He hoped that that would be the case, although the Handler’s posture certainly seemed to suggest that he wouldn’t wait until they were out of the room to deliver blows and punishments.

A loud shout from outside of the door made Cisco jump back, although he tried to keep his feet and most of his body rooted in one spot. Moving away wasn’t allowed.

“He’s a scared and abused child, not a criminal!” An angry voice, one that Cisco recognized as belonging to Joe, cried. “You’re keeping him locked up in a cell just because he has powers that he can’t control!”

“Those powers have the potential to be very, very dangerous,” a second voice, the Supervisor’s, replied. It was slightly less furious, although it was clear that he was angry. Cisco tried to suppress a small whimper. An angry Supervisor was a dangerous Supervisor. He knew that from experience. “They appear to be incredibly versatile, and when he was brought in he was somehow able to cancel out Barry’s speed, at least briefly. That means that, even if he himself doesn’t know it, our latest metahuman could quite possibly kill Barry.”

Cisco tried to hug his shoulders and curl up in on himself. He had tried to be a good Asset, he had really really tried, but it looked like it hadn’t been enough. Now they were going to see if it really was true that he might be able to hurt or even kill Barry, the only other Asset that had been kind to him since… Bette. No, no, Cisco didn’t want to hurt him, please, he had always hated the training exercises. Always loathed being forced to fight Bette for Eiling’s amusement.

The Doctor looked at Barry, and Cisco tensed. Even if he hated punishment, it was still preferable to being forced to watch another Asset get hurt. If the choice was between Barry getting hurt and Cisco himself being punished or tested, well, Cisco knew what he would choose. Assets had to stick together and protect each other, after all.

“Barry, can you tell them that they’re being way too loud?” The Doctor Ordered. Because surely that was her way of delivering Orders. Disguising them as questions and then punishing when they weren’t properly carried out. “They’re scaring…” She paused and looked Cisco up and down for a moment before sighing and speaking her next words like they physically hurt to say. “Five.”

Barry nodded and suddenly took off, lightning humming around him as he sped from the room almost too fast to see. Cisco stared after him with wide dark eyes. Barry had just used his powers. _Without_ permission. Unless Orders were a type of permission here? All of the Rules were strange and backwards and messed up at this new facility.

_(Cisco shivered as he curled up in on himself as well as he could, the manacles around his ankles rubbing his skin raw. His entire body was soaking wet; Eiling had decided to test how long he could hold his breath. Or at least he had said that it was a test, although Cisco was pretty sure that it was actually a punishment._

_Hadn’t been fast enough. Hadn’t been strong enough. Hadn’t Obeyed Eiling’s Orders quickly enough. Hadn’t built something within the time limit. Had eaten too much food. Had eaten too little food and then had to be force-fed. Hadn’t been good enough. Never good enough. Not for Eiling. Not for the other Handlers. Not for the Doctors. Not for the Enforcer who watched him from afar and taunted him._

_Was_ never _good enough. Always a failure. Always a monster brat killer little boy murderer tool weapon Asset. Property. One of Eiling’s toys._

_Next time, he would do better. Next time, he would be faster. Next time, he would be stronger. Next time, he would Obey every Order exactly the way that Eiling wanted him too. He repeated the thoughts over and over and over again in his head like a mantra. Next time. Next time. Next time._

_…Next time.)_

“Okay,” the Doctor said gently. “I’m going to look at your eyes, ears, and throat now, alright? I wasn’t able to do it earlier because we didn’t want to scare you after we saw your scars.”

Why would Cisco’s scars have scared her? She was a Doctor-surely she had inflicted similar ones onto Barry and onto any other Asset. Even if she was new, she had to have done that. Right? Right.

Cisco stayed still Obediently as the Doctor shone a light into his eyes and down his throat. But when she clipped together something to go in his ear, Cisco couldn’t stop himself from making a small noise.

He _hated_ things in his ears. That was something that Eiling knew well, and had often used to his full advantage. Cisco’s sensitive and advanced hearing made it difficult to regulate noise, and the one time that he had tried to make dampeners that would block out all of the crushing sound, he had been severely punished for it. Even if whatever the Doctor was approaching him with didn’t make any sound, he still hated it when there was something in his ears.

Cisco closed his eyes and bit down on the inside of his cheek, trying not to tremble as he felt the Doctor poke something inside first one ear, then take it out before doing the same to the other. He waited for loud sounds to start invading his skull, low or high noises that apparently only he could hear to slowly start driving him insane. Waited for her to start pumping sealant or cut open the insides or-or-or-

“Okay!” The Doctor said with forced cheerfulness. “Now I just need to look at your back again. Is that okay?”

Cisco turned around Obediently. He couldn’t Disobey. He was so, so close to being finished without any severe punishment, he couldn’t mess it up now.

The Doctor pulled up his shirt, made a small sound of sympathy and horror, and then pressed the cold metal of the stethoscope against his back again. “Deep breaths.”

Cisco did as he was Ordered, hoping that this would be all. That he wouldn’t be suddenly tested or punished.

As the Doctor pulled it away, Cisco heard her heartbeat suddenly quicken. No no no that was a bad sound, that was bad, now he had done something wrong and she would hurt him with all of the _(bad sharp shining)_ tools. Please. Please. He hadn’t meant to do anything wrong. But he couldn’t beg, they hadn’t liked it when he begged. Sniveling wasn’t allowed, although sometimes Cisco was pretty sure that Eiling enjoyed hearing it and pretending like he was going to leave him alone before Ordering the tests or punishment to begin.

Careful fingers pressed gently against his back, right above his left shoulder blade. Right where Cisco knew his brand was. “What’s this?”

“M-my brand, Ma’am,” Cisco answered nervously. “Of my number.”

The hand was snatched away at surprising speed, and Cisco tensed all of his muscles painfully. He hurt all over still, and he knew that the fact that he had accidentally agitated the Doctor would only make everything so much worse for him.

Then fingers touched it again, and this time they were spreading something sticky and thick on his back. Not just on the brand, either; the Doctor moved her hand down onto some of the other scars on his back as well. Cisco waited for her to reveal that she was putting poison on all of his old wounds, or maybe even something to open them back up again, but instead she took a step back.

“There you go.” The Doctor smiled at Cisco weakly. “You’re all done. I mean, I would have liked to put more ointment on your other injuries and look at your feet, since they’re pretty cut up, but I know you’re scared. So you’re all done. Let me just take that IV out of your hand, okay? Then you’ll be done.”

Cisco stayed frozen as the Doctor undid the tube and then pulled the blue thing out of his hand before taping a cotton ball over the small puncture wound. Then she stepped back and motioned for Cisco to climb off of the bed.

“You can hop down now.”

Cisco ducked his head and did as he was Ordered, standing stock still as soon as his feet hit the floor.

He looked up (mentally scolding himself for the action as he did so) when he heard Barry’s familiar heartbeat get close to the door and then enter the room. It was followed by two others, one of which was firm while the other moved on wheels that hummed quietly.

Barry smiled and shrugged sheepishly. “Uh, they’re going to try to be a little bit quieter now.”

Joe and the Supervisor, who were both standing just behind the tall Asset, glared at each other but didn’t say anything out loud. Cisco tucked his hands behind his back and awkwardly squeezed them, trying to keep himself grounded and focused with the physical sensation.

Handler Rathaway cleared his throat, and immediately all eyes turned to him. Except for Cisco’s, which he forced to stay focused on the floor. “Even though you two were both yelling at each other, Joe did bring up a good point. He isn’t-you’re not a criminal.” He sent Barry a meaningful look that made Cisco shift nervously as he peered up through his eyelashes. “You just don’t know how to control your powers.”

Barry brightened suddenly. “Do you want us-well, me, mostly, I guess-to help you learn how to control your powers better?” He paused. “If you don’t want to, that’s really okay.” The Handler, Doctor, and Joe all looked at him in surprise, although the Supervisor didn’t move. “I know your powers hurt to use, uh, or at least I’m pretty sure that they do. If you don’t want to learn how to use them, that’s perfectly fine.”

Cisco didn’t say a word. Barry was clearly asking the Handlers and the Supervisor if it was okay for Cisco not to use his powers. It wasn’t Cisco’s own choice to make. He was an Asset; what happened to him depended completely on the will of the Handlers or the Supervisor. Not on what he might have wanted. (Not to ever use his powers again, not even if his own life depended on it.)

The silence stretched out longer, and Cisco kept his face turned down at the floor while he looked up at the others through his eyelashes. He hadn’t been given permission to move yet, which meant that he had to hide the fact that he was looking at them and waiting for them to pass their sentence.

Cisco kept waiting, but nobody said anything. Barry, the Doctor, and Handler Rathaway all exchanged looks, and then the Doctor turned back to Cisco.

“We’re asking you,” she said, looking at Cisco. He almost turned to see if there was someone behind him, but he couldn’t hear any heartbeats and he wasn’t allowed to move in order to check. The Doctor sighed. “Five? We’re asking you. It’s your choice to make, not ours. Do you want to learn how to control your powers or not? There’s no right or wrong answer.”

That was a lie. There was _always_ a right or a wrong answer. And usually the right one was whichever one Cisco hadn’t chosen. But… Which one was he supposed to choose? If he said that he wanted to use his powers and learn how to control them, then he might be punished because he wasn’t allowed to use his abilities without permission. But if he said that he didn’t want to use his powers, that might have been the wrong answer because of how backwards all of the Rules here were.

Joe took a step in his direction, and Cisco flinched away. Now he was going to be punished because he hadn’t chosen fast enough. Now he was going to learn that both answers were wrong (Eiling had done that a few times, pretended that Cisco was allowed to choose whatever he wanted and then taken that away from him the minute that he decided).

However, instead of hitting him or shouting at him or Ordering him to do something, Joe just stopped walking and spoke softly and evenly to Cisco. “You don’t have to choose now. It’s fine. You won’t be punished. You don’t have to make a decision now. And later, if you decide not to use your powers, that’s fine. And if you decide that you want to learn _how_ to use them, that’s fine too.”

Cisco shivered. No, no, no, it wasn’t fine. He would be punished for either choice no matter what he picked. And if he didn’t choose anything, then he would be punished as well. He couldn’t get out, he couldn’t-he couldn’t-

_(“Well, creature, what are you going to choose today?” Eiling sneered down at Cisco, who didn’t so much as try to move away. He was so tired, too tired, and he just wanted to sleep… Not allowed. He was never allowed. Not unless Eiling said that he was. “Do you want to see the true limits of your powers? Or do you want to keep running until you drop?”_

_Cisco blinked blearily up at Eiling. “R-running, Sir.”_

_Eiling smiled cruelly. “Oh really?”_

_He reached down and grabbed a handful of Cisco’s hair, using it to haul the boy to his feet. Cisco didn’t make a single sound. He knew that no matter what he did, Eiling would use it as an excuse to punish him._

_But he deserved it. Cisco always deserved punishment. He was an Asset, and Assets weren’t allowed to think for themselves. Which meant that Eiling had to think for him. And if Eiling said that Cisco deserved to be punished for something, then it must have been true. Cisco must have done something wrong. Must have been a bad Asset and Disobeyed one of his Handler’s Orders._

_Cisco always deserved punishment. He always-_

_Something-Eiling’s hand-covered his mouth and nose._

_Cisco went limp. He was okay, he was okay, he would be okay. Eiling would let him go. He didn’t want Cisco to die… Did he? Eiling had had plenty of times to kill him before and chosen not to._

_After several seconds, Cisco’s lungs started screaming for air. That was when he started to struggle, kicking out weakly and attempting to strike out with his hands at Eiling’s body. When that failed he started clawing at the hand, Cisco’s blunt broken fingernails digging deep enough into Eiling’s skin to draw blood._

_Cisco’s struggling grew weaker as his brain started to slow down and his vision became fuzzier. He was going to die. He knew that he was going to die. Eiling was going to kill him here, in this tiny cramped filthy cell. Cisco was going to die. Eiling was going to kill him. Cisco was going to die. And, oddly enough, Cisco was okay with that._

_After another second or two, however, Eiling dropped him, and Cisco lay limply on the floor. He took deep breaths, trying to draw air into his lungs, and then let out a choked breath when Eiling grabbed him by the throat and lifted him back up._

_The general pulled something small out of his pocket, and Cisco tried to see what it was but didn’t recognize it._

_At least, he didn’t see what it was before Eiling shoved it inside of his mouth and Cisco’s world went blue.)_

The boy snapped out of his thoughts as Joe spoke again. “Are you hungry?”

Cisco tilted his head to one side. He had just eaten, or at least he thought that he had. Joe himself had just given him soup. Hadn’t he?

“You need to eat,” the Doctor said, crossing her arms and shaking her head. Cisco flinched away awkwardly and rubbed his upper arm, feeling through one of the many rips in his sleeve (despite the fact that Bette had stolen him new clothes) at the scars that decorated his skin. “Even if it’s not very much at first. You’re too skinny and malnourished.”

No, he wasn’t. Cisco wasn’t allowed to be anything unless the Doctors said that he was. And even if she was a Doctor, this new woman hadn’t spoken to any of the old ones to Cisco’s knowledge. Eiling had _hated_ it when the Doctors did things without carefully conversing with each other and deciding what the best course of action was. Not even the Doctors and Handlers were exempt from a Supervisor’s punishment sometimes.

The Supervisor sighed. “Five?” Cisco looked at him. “Can you tell us why you aren’t hungry?”

“Not allowed to be hungry, Sir,” Cisco answered dutifully, dipping his head. “A-and I already ate.”

“But you should still eat again,” the Doctor said, shaking her head again sternly. “You have to.”

Cisco hesitated and curled up in on himself. This had to be a test of some kind, or-

Of course. That was what they were doing. They were giving him clean safe food so that he would get used to it, and then they would start giving him food that was drugged or poisoned or made him throw up over and over again until there was nothing left inside his stomach to come up. That had to have been what they were doing. It was a trick, all a trick, all a lie.

But Cisco couldn’t let them know that he was on to their plan. So he had to keep eating and saving the food like a good Asset while he tried to figure out what they were going to do to him first.

Barry took a few steps forward in Cisco’s direction, circling around him and getting close while pausing every time the teenager tensed or made a move as if to get away. “Hey, it’s fine. I’ll bring you something to eat, okay? Do you want to go back to the cell? The rest of us… Kinda have to talk.”

 _Barry_ was going to talk with them? Really? No, no, he must have meant watch and listen and answer questions only when he was asked. Not actually talk with them. Without permission, any form of speaking was forbidden. Even if Barry had been blatantly flaunting that Rule, that didn’t mean that he wouldn’t still be punished as soon as he was out of Cisco’s sight.

But… But Cisco did want to go back to the cell. The nice big cell that had a nice window he could look out of even if it wasn’t pointing so that he could see outside. The cell that had light and no chains so far. It was safe in there. Usually cells weren’t safe, but this one was.

“You can answer, son,” Joe said after the silence stretched on longer. Cisco jerked his head and rose up onto the balls of his feet before looking at Barry.

“I-I would like to go back to my cell, Sir,” Cisco said quickly and respectfully, kneading his fingers against his palms.

Barry winced and took another step until he was standing beside Cisco. “Okay. I’ll bring you down there, alright? Just like last time. No surprises or anything.” Cisco nodded slowly and took a small step to one side so that he was closer to Barry. The older Asset beamed at him, and Cisco wondered what it was that he had done right. “Come on.”

As Barry led Cisco toward the door, he turned around and walked backwards for a few paces. “I’ll, uh, talk when I get back up.”

* * *

Barry sighed and sat down heavily in one of the chairs that was still unoccupied. “What are we going to do now?”

Hartley shrugged slowly. “We don’t exactly have very many options.”

“We could keep him here at STAR Labs, considering that we have the supplies for it,” Caitlin mused, “but the equipment scares him.” She paused and shuddered. “For a good reason.”

Barry nodded. “We could try to find somewhere outside of the lab, like, uh, with someone that we trust.”

“Me.” Everyone looked at Joe. “I’ll take him. I have space, and it’s better than keeping him here where he’s locked up like a criminal. And we need to work on figuring out who he is. Maybe if we give him somewhere safe and let him get more used to us, he might be a little bit more open to telling us who he is and who the person was that had him.”

“Well, we know that he has a name, and that _he_ knows he has a name,” Barry pointed out. “I asked, and he said that he did. But why won’t he tell us?”

“Our newest metahuman was clearly punished for so much as eating without permission,” Dr. Wells reminded them. “He might have been beaten for trying to remember it. They did give him a number instead, after all.”

“Then what are we going to call him?” Caitlin asked. “As a sort of… Temporary name? Until we figure out his real one. We can’t just keep calling him ‘the kid’ or ‘the newest metahuman’. We need a name. And I don’t think that just saying John Doe will suffice.”

“He doesn’t look like a John,” Barry agreed. He paused and thought for a moment. Just as he opened his mouth, Hartley did the same, and they spoke at the same time.

“Carlos,” they said in unison.

Barry looked at the other man. “Hey, how did you know what I was going to say?”

“I didn’t.” Hartley cocked his head. “Carlos is one of the scientists in Welcome to Night Vale, and the kid looked interested enough in what I was doing last night even though he was scared out of his mind.”

The speedster blushed bright red and muttered something that sounded suspiciously like “Magic School Bus.”

Joe sighed and looked around. “Does anybody have any better ideas?” There was no response, and the detective shook his head. “Carlos it is.”

Caitlin crossed her arms. “I want to find out who took him. It’s fine to give him a name now, and I know that I’m the one who suggested the idea, but it won’t do us very much good if we don’t find out what made that kid-I mean, what made Carlos so terrified to even move without us telling him that he was allowed. If they’re still out there…”

“I’ll work on it,” Joe promised her. “Whoever that monster is, we’ll find him and take him down.”

Barry nodded and stood up. “Well, I know I said that I would bring the ki-Carlos something to eat, so… I’d better go do that. And then I have to leave. Singh said that there was homicide evidence waiting for me.”

* * *

Cisco sat still in the cell as Barry opened it, the other Asset balancing a tray that held a sandwich and another bottle of water on one of his palms. The tall Asset sat down on the floor across from the teenager, slowly sliding the tray so that it was in front of Cisco while still keeping his distance from the boy. Cisco hesitated for a moment before slowly reaching for the water. Barry wouldn’t tell the Handlers if he broke the Rules.

Would he?

Cisco inspected the water bottle. It seemed like it was still sealed, which was strange. But that also meant that it was probably safe for him to drink. If it was sealed, then they probably hadn’t been able to drug or poison it. Probably. Which… Which meant that he could drink it, right? Right.

He still looked at Barry for confirmation, who nodded encouragingly. “You can drink. It’s okay.”

Cisco slowly unscrewed the lid and drank from the bottle, accidentally draining the entire thing in a few large gulps. Some of the water trickled down his chin and dampened his shirt, making several small darker spots. For a moment the seventeen-year-old was worried that the accidental action might get him in trouble somehow (he was wasting water), but Barry didn’t make a move to threaten him.

“So,” Barry began, and Cisco looked at him nervously, “would you be alright with us calling you Carlos?” Cisco stared at him in confusion. “I mean, we don’t really know your real name, and it’s a little awkward to keep calling you ‘kid’ all the time, but I wanted to make sure that it was okay with you before we actually started saying it.”

Cisco blinked at them. What was Barry talking about? Was this some sort of test? Or… Maybe, because they used names instead of numbers here, they gave all of their Assets a different name. (Was Cisco supposed to ask what Barry’s real name was? Would Barry tell him, or would they both be punished for so much as thinking it?)

And… And he had wasted water. A whole bottle was enough to get him through a day and a half-two days, if he had been bad and failed to Obey an Order. And he had just wasted all of it in a matter of seconds.

“So… Are you okay with it?” Barry prompted. “Or not? If you aren’t that’s cool, but if you are it would be pretty nice to have an actual name to call you by.”

Cisco risked nodding quickly before looking back down at the tray of food. He wondered if Barry had eaten yet. Judging by the way that he was eyeing the tray, Cisco guessed that he hadn’t. Hoping that nobody would punish him for speaking without permission, Cisco picked up the sandwich and held it out to Barry. “Do you want it?”

The older Asset jumped in place slightly. “Huh? Oh, no, that’s yours. I have food. I’m not going to take your, uh, lunch? Dinner? Late lunch.”

Cisco tilted his head. “They give you food? But… You’re an Asset.”

Maybe, because Barry was so valuable to them, they gave him more food.

“Asset-oh, right, metahuman. I mean, they give me food sometimes, but it kind of tastes like garbage because it has so many calories in it. So usually I just buy food.” Barry blushed. “And a lot of it. I need to consume, like, ten thousand calories a day or something like that.”

Cisco stared at him. That-that was way too much food. Why would they give that to him? Even for a _valuable_ Asset that was far, far too much to give anyone. Although Barry had said that he usually bought food. Maybe because he had been captured later and because he was so fast, he could sneak off without the Handlers noticing and get himself something to eat.

Which meant that Barry probably didn’t have a proper food hoard. So Cisco would have to save parts of his for Barry to eat. Just in case he needed it.

Barry drummed his fingers on his knees as he crossed his legs. Cisco shifted and tore his sandwich in half, wrapping up one half in the small paper napkin that Barry had included while taking a small bite out of the other one.

Cisco shivered and tucked himself down into his shoulders. “Can-can I ask you a question?”

Barry nodded quickly, his face blurring. “Of course! Whenever you have one.”

“When will the Handlers start to do tests on my powers?” Cisco asked in a small voice. “When will the tests start?”

Barry’s green eyes stretched wide. “What? No, never. Nobody will do anything to you that you don’t want to. Which means that there won’t be any tests, okay? None. Never.”

Cisco blinked a few times. “But… But if they don’t do tests, then how will I be Useful to them? I have to be Useful.”

“No, you don’t,” Barry tried to assure him. “You don’t have to be useful to anybody, not anymore.”

Cisco froze. No, no, that wasn’t right. He had to be Useful. If he wasn’t Useful, if they didn’t do tests on him, if he didn’t do well and Obey Orders, if they didn’t do tests, then he would be… Then they would kill him. Eiling had always said that he would kill Cisco once he had outlived his Usefulness. That Cisco’s only purpose in life was to be a test subject and a lab rat for Eiling and his scientists to do experiments on. If Cisco wasn’t Useful…

He started to shake and looked up at Barry with dark brown eyes slowly starting to grow glassy with tears. “N-no, I’ll be Useful, I promise I’ll be useful, please. I promise. I’ll be good. I’ll be Useful. I’ll be good and I’ll Obey and I’ll follow Orders, I’ll be Useful, I promise, just please, please don’t kill me, please-”

In two seconds Barry was in front of Cisco, but he couldn’t bring himself to try to fight back. If being tested and punished and tortured what was what it took for him to be Useful, for them not to kill him, then he would bear it.

Cisco didn’t expect a pair of long arms to grab him and hold him close to Barry’s body. He stiffened and almost tried to pull away, because surely this was a trick. A test. Some sort of buildup to a punishment. But he didn’t, because he had to be brave. He had to show Barry that he could be a good Useful Asset to the Handlers and to the Supervisor.

“Nobody will kill you,” Barry whispered into Cisco’s ear. Lies, it had to be lies, it all had to be lies. “Nobody is going to hurt you ever again, okay? Not while I’m around. We’ll keep you safe, alright? You don’t have to be ‘useful’ or anything else, got it? As long as you’re happy and unhurt, it doesn’t matter if you’re useful.”

Cisco closed his eyes and tried to keep back the tears. He tried to focus on Barry’s heartbeat. To block out all of the too-loud noise and just stay pinpointed on one sound.

 _Safe. Safe safe safe safe safe_ the heart repeated, and Cisco, after a long moment of careful consideration, tucked himself closer to Barry’s body. Above his head (even though he couldn’t see it), the speedster smiled. Cisco felt the older Asset rub his shoulder blade comfortingly.

“It’s alright,” Barry promised. “You’re safe here. STAR Labs will protect you, alright? All of us will. Nobody is going to hurt you, nobody is going to do any tests on you, okay? You’re safe. You’re safe.”

Barry’s heartbeat repeated the word over and over again, and slowly Cisco wondered if that was true. Of course, he would never be safe at a facility, but maybe with Barry… Maybe that was when he would be safe. When it was just them, no Handlers, no Supervisors, no doctors. Nobody to hurt them. Barry, Cisco decided, wouldn’t hurt him. He was a Safe person. A good Asset. Like… Like Bette. Like Cisco himself. Barry was good.

Slowly, Cisco wrapped his arms back around Barry in return and pressed his face into the older man’s chest. Barry’s shirt was soft and warm, and Cisco wondered what he had done to be rewarded with it. The old Handlers almost never gave him any rewards outside of books and occasionally a little extra food, but the Rules were so different and backwards here. Who knew how they would reward him?

Cisco shifted his position oh-so-slightly, blinking back tears.

The wave of blue and white that crashed over him caught him completely off guard.

_Cisco stiffened as his eyes caught the scene before him. Something tingled through his skin, less like the feeling that usually accompanied the visions and more like the smell of ozone._

_Barry himself was sitting on a hospital bed-the same one that the Doctor had put Cisco on earlier. Which meant that Cisco was probably going to see a test. One that they had done to Barry. As much as Cisco didn’t want to see it, it might have been helpful to have a glimpse of what might have been coming. What they might decide to do to him to see how he would react._

_That was when Cisco caught sight of the blackish red wound on Barry’s side, a little ways above his hip, and his stomach twisted. Were they going to do that to him?_

_“It’s still numb,” Barry sighed with a grimace, and the Doctor took a step back._

_“It’s presenting itself like third-degree frostbite,” she explained._

_“I thought that he had hyper healing?” Another voice, a new voice, one that Cisco didn’t know (another Handler? A Doctor, maybe. Probably not a Supervisor or an Enforcer) asked the Doctor._

_“It’s been slowed.” The Doctor shook her head and walked around the bed to stand in front of Barry. “If your cells weren’t regenerating at the rate they are, your blood vessels would have frozen solid and the nerve damage would have been permanent. You’re lucky to be alive.”_

_Yes, lucky. Lucky to be alive so that he would be experimented on again and again and again, with no hope for escape in any way._

_Barry frowned and stood up from the table, even as Cisco hoped that he would stop moving without permission. Whatever they had done to him, it looked incredibly painful (no matter how numb Barry claimed it was) and Cisco didn’t want it to happen again. Whether it was to Barry a second, third, fourth, or fifth time, or to Cisco himself for the first time._

_“Snart wasn’t another metahuman.” Barry said, probably to the Supervisor. Ah. Maybe they had just sent him out to try to capture another Asset for them, but it turned out that it wasn’t an Asset? That was probably what had happened. So now Barry was reporting back to the Supervisor. It made sense now. “He had a gun. It froze things, like shot ice out of the front. and it slowed me down.” Barry paused. “Enough that I wasn’t able to save someone.”_

_Save someone? What did that mean?_

_“According to his records, Snart didn’t even finish high school,” the same female voice from before said. This time, Cisco couldn’t resist turning around, and blinked as he saw a woman with blond hair and glasses standing in front of the same strange console-desk-thing that he had seen earlier. “So how did he build a handheld high-tech snow machine?”_

_“Maybe he didn’t,” The Supervisor suggested, and suddenly little pieces started to come together inside of Cisco’s mind. “It is entirely possible that Snart stole it from another source, or had it built solely for him to use.”_

_“Then we should probably figure out who_ did _make it,” the new woman maybe-Handler decided. “So that they can’t build another one.”_

Cisco jolted out of the vision and immediately sprang away from Barry, folding up onto himself in a small ball and cringing away. Not only had he used his powers without permission from a Handler or from a Supervisor or a Doctor, but-but…

A gun that shot a beam of ice instead of bullets. That Cisco knew cooled things down to absolute zero. The opposite of speed, something that he knew from the multitude of books that Eiling had forced him to read before making him build just such a gun.

Cisco squeezed his eyes shut and remembered the ugly injury on Barry’s side from the vision. It was his fault. His fault. His fault. All his fault. Now Barry was going to hate him and ask the Handlers and the Supervisor to do all sorts of painful bad scary tests on him. He hadn’t known what he was doing. Cisco had had no idea that that was what the gun he had been Ordered to build would do. Really, he hadn’t. Please, please, Barry had to believe him, please…

Cisco didn’t even realize that he had started to repeat the word out loud before Barry interrupted him.

“It’s alright,” he murmured sympathetically. “It’s okay. You’re safe here, alright? Nobody here will ever hurt you. _Never._ Okay? You don’t have to beg, you didn’t do anything wrong. I promise. It’s safe here. Everything is okay here.”

Lie trick test con experiment, they wanted to see how he would react, they were going to hurt him, please god no he didn’t want to-it had been an accident. He hadn’t known what Eiling was making him do. But now Cisco had hurt their Asset, not matter how indirectly, and that meant that he deserved to be punished. Usually, hurting another Asset would be something that the Supervisor or the Handlers approved of. But… But somehow Cisco didn’t think that these weird new Handlers would think the same way.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Cisco repeated, over and over and over again. “I’m sorry, I built it, I’m sorry, please don’t-” He tried to tuck his hands behind his back. What he had done was surely unforgivable, punishable with something severe. Maybe they would cut off his hands-he didn’t want them to do that. Hopefully if they decided to do something like that, they would only take a couple of fingers. “I’m sorry I didn’t know I’m sorry I’m sorry.”

“Didn’t know?” Barry frowned. “Didn’t know what?”

Cisco trembled. “I built it, I built it, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. I built the gun that hurt you, I didn’t know, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

“Gun? I don’t-what gun are you talking about?” Barry furrowed his eyebrows. “We don’t have a gun? I mean, Joe does, but he’s a cop, so…” He paused for a moment, mind racing. “Wait a minute. Did you-did you build the cold gun? The one that Snart uses? Do you know Snart?”

“I’m sorry,” Cisco apologized again. “I didn’t know. They didn’t tell me why I was supposed to make it. Please don’t punish me, please, I’m sorry, I don’t want to-I don’t want to-”

“It’s okay, you didn’t know, right? It’s fine. I don’t blame you. You weren’t the one who shot me, right?” Barry hesitated for a moment. “Did you use your powers just now? When you touched me? Is that why you started apologizing?”

Cisco nodded quickly. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so so so sorry. It was an accident. I wasn’t trying to do it, I swear.”

“So you saw me? And the cold gun, I guess. What did you see?” Barry asked.

“You, th-the Doctor, Handler Rathaway, the Supervisor, and-and a woman I didn’t recognize,” Cisco answered as quickly as he could. “You were hurt, and they said that it was a gun that sh-shot ice.”

Barry nodded slowly-well, slowly for him, anyways. “Did the woman have blond hair and glasses? And was the injury right about here?” He tapped his side with one finger and Cisco nodded. Barry rolled up the bottom of his shirt. “Well, see? It didn’t even leave a mark. I heal fast, alright? You don’t have to worry about me. And you didn’t shoot the gun, did you? You didn’t kill anybody with it or shoot me, right?”

Cisco shook his head tentatively, unsure of where this was going.

“Well, then it isn’t your fault,” the older Asset said decisively. “You didn’t know why they were having you built it. You didn’t decide to shoot me. That means that it isn’t your fault.”

Cisco shook. Maybe Barry didn’t think that it was his fault, but the Handlers and the Supervisor certainly would. They would make the Doctor do tests on him and cut him open. He would be put in the Pit, maybe for a month. But he deserved it. He deserved to be punished, because he had broken the Rules and hurt their Asset without permission. He had been bad.

After a long moment of silence, Barry took a deep breath. “I forgive you. Does that help? I don’t blame you at all for what happened.”

No, no, it didn’t, because even if _Barry_ didn’t blame Cisco the others would. Didn’t he understand that?

“I’m going to get Caitlin. Remember her?” Barry asked, and Cisco nodded. Yes, he remembered the Doctor; and hadn’t Handler Rathaway mentioned her when he had given Cisco a plate of food? Had said that it belonged to Caitlin. Cisco had thought that he had meant an Asset, but if there was only one Caitlin and she was the Doctor… No, no, Cisco would surely be in twice as much trouble now. “I’m going to go get her and bring her down here so that she can help me explain that you won’t be punished.”

Then the other Asset was gone _(using his powers without permission, that was bad and wrong and punishable, didn’t Barry realize that no matter how much false trust he seemed to place in the Handlers?)_ in a hum of sparks, taking the safe safe safe safe heartbeat along with him.

Moments later he returned (was there another way to the upper levels of the facility that Cisco didn’t know about? Because Barry certainly hadn’t taken the elevator) carrying the Doctor bridal style. She looked surprised and a little flustered, probably from being carried along by the tall Asset. Barry set her (Doctor Caitlin) carefully down on the floor, and she almost immediately knelt just outside of Cisco’s cell.

Cisco cowered away. “Sorry, sorry, I know I deserve punishment, I’m sorry, please don’t hurt me, I know I deserve it, I’m sorry.”

Doctor Caitlin made an aborted motion to reach forward in Cisco’s direction before pulling her hand back. “No, you don’t. You never deserve punishment like that, not here.”

A test. A trick. Something to see if he remembered what the Rules were and how to Obey them. Something to see if he still knew his place in the facility and in the world. So Cisco shook his head. “Yes, I do, I deserve punishment. I always deserve punishment. I was a bad Asset, so I deserve to be punished. I deserve-”

“You’re right,” Doctor Caitlin interrupted him, and Cisco stopped short as Barry gave the Doctor a completely shocked look. “Your punishment is to help us build something so that the gun can’t hurt anybody again, okay? So that Barry doesn’t get hurt by it and civilians don’t get hurt by it. That’s your punishment. Nothing else, just that.”

Cisco paused. That wasn’t… That wasn’t a real, true punishment. Was it? It didn’t hurt him, and it didn’t make him regret what he had done. Maybe, while he was working, they would do something to purposefully make him hurt himself. Or these Handlers and Doctors had to tell the Supervisor before they did anything. And because Doctor Caitlin hadn’t consulted with the Supervisor, she couldn’t punish Cisco too severely. At least not yet.

Barry was still looking at Doctor Caitlin with surprise. As Cisco watched nervously, he reached out and tugged on the woman’s arm. “Caitlin? Can I see you for a second, please?”

Doctor Caitlin nodded, and Cisco waited for her to strike at Barry for speaking and moving (moving to _touch_ the Doctor!) without any permission. But she didn. Instead, she led the tall Asset over to the doorway of the elevator. Cisco tried not to listen to them, he really did, but it was too hard not to; they were standing close by and Cisco’s hearing could have picked up their voices through walls.

“I know what you’re going to say,” the Doctor cut Barry off before he could speak, arms crossing. Cisco wanted to warn the other Asset of the inevitable punishment that he had surely just merited, but bit his tongue. Cisco didn’t want to be punished either. Doctor Caitlin continued. “Punishment, rewards, stuff like that-it’s what he-I mean, what Carlos _understands._ All of this stuff, it’s so new and unfamiliar to him. He clearly doesn’t understand why he’s being treated like an actual person.”

“But if we punish him for something that he didn’t have any control over-” Barry started to say, only to stop when the Doctor held up her hand.

“Like I said. That’s what Carlos understands. If we don’t ‘punish’ him at all, he’ll think that we’re just building up to it. But if we do something small, that isn’t even really punishment at all…” The Doctor recrossed her arms.

Barry scowled. “I still don’t like it. You guys were watching over the security cameras when he asked why I didn’t have a collar, right?” The lanky Asset shook his head while chewing his lower lip as Doctor Caitlin nodded. “It’s… Horrible. Disgusting. And I see dead bodies almost every day.”

“I know.” Doctor Caitlin looked at Cisco, who tried to act like he wasn’t listening in intently on their conversation. He must have failed, because the Doctor sighed. “I think Carlos may have forgotten to mention enhanced hearing when he listed his powers earlier.”

Cisco’s eyes stretched wide as he realized that it was true. No, no, no, he hadn’t meant to do that. He had meant to be truthful, he hadn’t meant to lie, please, please. No. Don’t punish him, please. “Please don’t punish me!” Cisco gasped, before snapping his mouth shut when he remembered that they hadn’t liked the pleading before. “I’m sorry!”

Barry sent Doctor Caitlin a reproachful look, although she didn’t respond. Cisco wondered how she would punish her Asset later. Barry walked away from the Doctor and knelt down on Cisco’s level outside of the cell door. “Hey, hey, nobody is going to punish you. It’s okay that you forgot to say it. Nobody will hurt your for that. It’s just useful to know so that we don’t yell around you or make too many loud noises that will scare you. Not so that we can hurt you.”

Cisco eyed him disbelievingly. There was no way that that was true, and Barry probably knew it, but the strange false confidence that Barry seemed to place in the Handlers and Doctors and likely even the Supervisor was clearly genuine. Maybe their punishments for him were subtle. Less like beating and more like scolding with thinly veiled threats. If Barry had been caught later in his life, he could have had friends or family that the Handlers had threatened to hurt if he didn’t Obey and cooperate with them.

Cisco would have to ask. Hopefully Barry would be okay with answering.

Doctor Caitlin tugged on Barry’s shoulder and made a move to pull him away. Cisco tensed automatically, waiting for her to lash out at either him or at the other Asset. But she just tugged Barry to his feet and slowly pushed him in the direction of the elevator. “Come on. We’ll discuss this with everyone else, and then I think that you have a case to get to.”

Case? What did that mean? Cisco watched them leave with confusion before realizing that they hadn’t closed the door behind them.

Was this a test? Were they going to do something? Did the Handlers want to see if Cisco would follow even their unspoken Orders? To see if he would stay inside of the cell like he was supposed to?

Well, then Cisco wasn’t going to disappoint them. He would stay here, inside of his cell, like a good Asset. He wouldn’t make a single move, not even to escape.

Cisco knew what would happen if he did.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Things don't have to change the world to be important." --Steve Jobs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The same warnings are here for the last parts of this story, minus the child neglect. There are a few brief mentions of self-harm in this fic, although none of them are graphic compared to other things in this chapter/the story at large.
> 
> Also, I am fully aware that these chapters are _ridiculously_ long, and I apologize.

Cisco snapped back into reality and out of his thoughts just as the elevator door opened. He immediately jumped to his feet in an attempt to stand at attention and to show that he had Obeyed the unspoken Order and stayed still just like he was supposed to. Hadn’t moved so much as a muscle without being given permission. 

The person that stepped out of the elevator was the Handler, Handler Rathaway. Cisco wondered if he was going to be the Main Handler. Like Eiling had been. Although Eiling had been a Supervisor too. (Cisco didn’t think that it was possible for a facility to have more than one Supervisor, even if Handler Rathaway certainly seemed to carry himself as if he were one.)

Handler Rathaway paused just outside of the cell door, something that many of the people at this new facility seemed to do, and looked at Cisco with confusion. “Why didn’t you move? We left the cell door open for a reason, you know.”

Cisco’s heartbeat sped up. No, no, no, no no no they had  _ wanted  _ him to move, he had  _ Disobeyed  _ by staying still. No, no, no, he was sorry, he was sorry, he was so so so so sorry, please don’t punish him, please, no, he hadn’t meant to-he would do better next time. Promise promise promise that he would.

The Handler continued. “It’s fine that you didn’t, especially since you don’t know how to use your powers and I would prefer that STAR Labs was only blown up once.”

The teenager frowned in confusion. STAR Labs was the name of this place, wasn’t it? That was what Barry had said, at least. But… It had blown up? It certainly didn’t look like it had been blown up.

Although it wasn’t like he hadn’t seen too much of it.

The seventeen-year-old jumped as the Handler reached toward him, flinching as he realized that now he was going to be taken away and punished. Maybe it would be the Pit. Maybe it would be whips. Maybe Handler Rathaway would Order Cisco to stand still while he held a lighter up to the boy’s skin and watched it burn and blacken underneath the small flame.

The Handler let his arm fall back down to rest at his side. “Okay. Not going to touch you. But I just wanted you to know that you could leave at any time you wanted. If the cell door is open, you can walk around. Just try not to break anything. Especially my stuff.”

Cisco recognized that for the threat it was and nodded hesitantly. He understood that he wasn’t allowed to touch anything or else he would be punished. He understood that.

Handler Rathaway stepped away and looked back over his shoulder at Cisco. “Now come on. It’s time for your… ‘Punishment’.”

Cisco stiffened before remembering that the Doctor had said his punishment was to build something to stop the gun that shot ice Eiling had made him make. Cisco could do that. He would do that. He would show them that he could be good and strong and Obey Orders. The perfect Asset for them. Cisco could do that. He could do that. Cisco would show them.

Walking quickly behind Handler Rathaway, Cisco kept his head bowed and his shoulders slumped as he walked down through the small narrow hallway to the elevator. As soon as he was inside, Cisco pressed himself against the wall that was furthest from the Handler. Even if he hadn’t made any moves to strike Cisco so far, that didn’t mean that he wasn’t going to do so. Especially once Cisco did something unforgivable.

As soon as the elevator door opened, the Handler led the seventeen-year-old into the same room that he had before. Not the Doctor-Room with the  _ (bad please stop I’ll be good I’ll be good please stop) _ tools, but the other one. The one where Cisco had broken the cup and eaten the Doctor’s food.

It must have been Handler Rathaway’s workroom. Before, the Handlers had all had workrooms, but they had been scary places with chains and whips and other bad bad bad no things that they used to punish Assets when they had been Disobedient. Not places where things were built and designed. (Unless… Unless they were designing new punishments for them to do to Cisco. Then they were places for building. But still bad. And still scary and painful.)

Handler Rathaway waved a hand at the stuff on the table. “Ask before you use anything, but it’s all yours.”

Cisco blinked. His? He could use it to make things? A gun or a shield or… Or even dampeners for his ears? He would have to ask before he did that, of course. Of course. And last time when he made Dampeners he had been punished. Whipped and put in a sensory deprivation tank before being dropped in the Pit which Eiling had slowly filled with freezing water while Cisco begged and pleaded to be let out. Which meant that even if it meant he was told “no”, Cisco would have to ask Handler Rathaway before trying to build any sort of dampeners.

Slowly, Cisco stepped toward the table and touched a screwdriver before looking at Handler Rathaway for confirmation that he was allowed to use it. The older man nodded and Cisco quickly moved his hand over to some pliers. Again, a nod, and so it went on as Cisco asked for permission to use tool after tool after tool. Every time, the Handler nodded or said something to the affect of “you can use it.”

And then Cisco started to draw. He already knew that he could use the pencil and paper, although he made sure to keep one eye on Handler Rathaway at all times to make sure that everything was safe. That Cisco hadn’t overstepped his boundaries.

Slowly Cisco started to work up the courage to ask if he could make the dampeners. He knew that he needed them; he could hear  _ everything, _ from the Handler’s heartbeats to the low humming of the electricity in the circuits in the walls to low voices in a nearby room. Or maybe it wasn’t nearby. Maybe it was on the other side of the facility. It probably was, since Cisco could identify one of them as Barry’s and the others as the Supervisor’s.

Was the other Asset in trouble? Was he going to be punished?

The tip of the pencil snapped off from the pressure that Cisco had accidentally been putting on it. The boy tensed, eyes flicking over to the Handler. Surely there was no way that Cisco would be allowed to get a new pencil now that this one had been broken by his carelessness.

As Handler Rathaway stood up, Cisco jumped and tried to scoot away before forcing himself to stay still in once spot. But the Handler didn’t yell. Didn’t do anything. Just pulled out another pencil and held it out. Cisco looked at it. Was he supposed to take it? Was he supposed to use it to stab himself in the hand for his Disobedience as a sort of cruel and ironic punishment?

“You can take it. You… You have my permission,” Handler Rathaway sighed after a long minute of silence. (Relative silence. There was still heartbeats and breathing and footsteps and voices and electricity and air moving and-and-)

“Can I make dampeners?” Cisco clapped a hand over his mouth. He had spoken without permission. In front of a Handler. One that had lots and lots of tools at his disposal that he could use to hurt Cisco, many of which were in this very room. “I’m sorry,” Cisco mumbled around his hand. “I’m sorry I didn’t mean to speak without permission. I didn’t mean to speak without permission. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” the Handler assured him, setting the pencil down. “Take deep breaths. Can you explain to me what dampeners are?”

Cisco Obeyed, taking several deep breaths. “I-I hear things. Lots of things. Like heartbeats and breathing and-and everything moving and being and _ shifting _ , and if I make dampeners then I don’t have to and I know that you won’t let me but please, please, I need them-”

“So it’s a sensory input thing?” Handler Rathaway interrupted with an unreadable expression on his face. “For your ears?”

Cisco nodded as fast as he could. “Yes, Sir.”

The Handler nodded slowly. “And they won’t be weaponized? Used to hurt anybody?”

“N-no, Sir, you can watch me the entire time that I make them, Sir.” Cisco shifted nervously.

_ (“Trying to build a weapon, Asset?” Eiling sneered, kicking Cisco in the ribs as the boy whimpered and tried to curl away beneath him. “You know that that’s punishable.”) _

“Okay. If you need them, then go ahead and make them,” Handler Rathaway said with a decisive nod. “You’re allowed.”

Cisco stared at him disbelievingly for a moment before leaping into action, moving as fast as he could. He already knew what they would look like. How they would be made. What exactly he would need to make them. But he still had to move fast. Who knew when the Handler would decide that Cisco didn’t actually need to make the dampeners?

* * *

Hartley watched the boy-watched Carlos work, thin fingers quickly grabbing tools and materials that he would need for his so-called dampeners. After a moment of grabbing what he would need, the teenager (was he a teenager? He couldn’t have been older than thirteen, could he?) stopped suddenly and looked at Hartley with trepidation.

The young man sighed and backed away from the table. He-Carlos had obviously been abused, and the scars that lined his body probably didn’t even show the extent of it. One of them… It had clearly come from a  _ vivisection. _ Vivisection on a living, breathing (meta)human subject was practically a death sentence. Hartley supposed that most people would consider it a miracle that Carlos had survived, but if the other scars and their age were anything to go by, death might have been merciful compared to what else his captors had done to him.

“You have my permission,” Hartley reminded Carlos, keeping his hands down at his sides and making sure that the scrawny metahuman could see them. “You’re allowed.”

As Carlos started working again, Hartley realized that he was making something that looked akin to hearing aids, although with the opposite purpose. The implants in his own ears looked entirely different once they were taken out, something that he resisted doing at all costs unless it was  _ absolutely  _ necessary for some reason.

_ (Hartley gritted his teeth as he paced back and forth in Dr. Wells’s office. Didn’t that man realize what the explosion would do to the city? The dark matter and X energy that would be released? Was he  _ really _ so blinded by his own vanity and pride that he would let innocent people be hurt or killed? _

_ Hartley himself was no stranger to pride. But he wouldn’t let people  _ die _ for it. _

_ He’d confronted Wells down in front of the actual accelerator itself, but the man had just told him to wait for him in his office. Why wasn’t he listening? He clearly realized that something was going to go wrong. Wells had to know that there were risks. That there were dangers in activating the accelerator. But they could fix them. They could make it so that nothing happened. It wouldn’t explode. _

_ The door to the office opened and Wells stepped in, a disarming smile on his face and a benign stance. “Hartley-” _

_ “You know what will happen if we turn this thing on,” Hartley spat, spinning around and stepping closer to shove himself as close as possible to Wells’s face. “You know that people will die. And even if they don’t, there will still be a  _ hole _ in Central City. Which will be  _ our  _ fault, won’t it  _ Harrison?”

_ “But think of the benefits,” Wells interrupted him, and Hartley stepped back. “We can contain the explosion, minimize it down so that it spreads out underground instead of into the air. We don’t even know that the particle accelerator will even explode in the first place. There’s a high probability that it won’t cause so much as a radio disturbance.” _

_ “And if it doesn’t?” Hartley scowled. “If it kills people and ruins lives?” _

_ “Well, we’ll just have to keep quiet about that, won’t we?” Wells said pleasantly. “Because the chance of it happening is so low that we couldn’t have possibly known about it. I trust you, Hartley. You’re still my guy.” _

_ Hartley stared at him as Wells turned and started to walk out of the office. As the man rested his hand on the doorknob, Hartley spoke up. “I won’t. I won’t keep quiet about this. I’ll tell people-the CCPD, the  _ Picture News, _ I’ll tell people. You won’t get away with this.” _

_ Wells paused for a moment. “Who will believe you, Hartley? Who will be believe the disgraced heir, the prodigal outcast? They’ll spin it into a story, you know that. Say that you were sleeping with me, that you were jealous of one of your coworkers that grew close to me and now you want to drag my name through the mud. The media will turn you, the one who was set to inherit it all, into just another gossip column for them to pick over and dissect. And no matter what you do or say, the accelerator,  _ my  _ accelerator, will still turn on.” _

_ He marched out of his office, leaving a shocked Hartley behind him.) _

Hartley jumped as his phone rang-Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9. Caitlin’s ringtone. Carlos looked at him curiously, a wire in each hand. Hartley sighed. “You can keep working. Let me answer this.”

He tapped the  _ accept call _ button and held the phone up to his ear. “Yes, Caitlin?”

_ “Hartley? Do you know where Barry is?”  _ Caitlin sounded worried, and Hartley sighed.

“I have no idea where Allen is. Have you tried checking Ms. West’s blog for any new updates?”

_ “Why would that tell me anything?”  _ Caitlin asked suspiciously.

Hartley smirked even though he knew that the doctor couldn’t see it over the phone. “He’s been meeting with her. Giving… Private interviews.”

The other line hung up, and Hartley couldn’t suppress a small laugh as he returned his phone to his pocket. When he looked up, he saw that Carlos was staring at him with wide eyes. “What?” When there was no reply, he narrowed his eyes. “You’re allowed to tell me.”

“You-you don’t know where Barry is?” Carlos asked in a small voice. “You aren’t tracking him?”

“No, we only do that when he’s wearing the suit,” Hartley answered with a frown. “We have his phone number, and he’s entitled to some privacy after all.”

“But what if he escapes?” Carlos’s dark eyes were wide. “What if he runs away? He’s fast, and he needs to eat a lot, what if he runs away? He could run away!”

“Well, it’s not like running away would be a bad thing,” Hartley huffed. “It’s certainly helped him out of some bad situations a few times.”

Carlos was still staring at him, and Hartley remembered what he had said to Barry while Caitlin, Wells, Joe, and Hartley were watching over the security cameras. About the collars (the marks from which were still evident on his neck) and not being allowed to eat or sleep without permission. Carlos clearly thought that things were the same way here. That he would be collared and kept in a pit. In a tiny cramped cell without food or water.

Hartley suddenly realized something and his blood ran cold. Asset Number 005. Did that mean that there were four more people, possibly children like Carlos, still trapped wherever he had been?

Carlos kept looking at him. “But… He’s an Asset…”

“You mean a metahuman? Yes, he is. So what?” Hartley tapped his fingers against his thigh. “That doesn’t mean he isn’t a person. Just with some added benefits.”

Carlos shivered and went back to working, keeping his head down and staying silent. Hartley looked at his watch. He knew that they were  _ technically  _ supposed to be working on something to counter the cold gun that Leonard Snart used, and they would have to work on that later, but they still had time. Quite a bit of it. Unless Snart decided to pull another heist right that second, they would be fine timewise.

* * *

As Cisco worked (making sure to watch the Handler for signs that he had done something wrong and punishable), he thought about the people that he had met so far, trying to categorize them properly.

Barry was an Asset, of course. A Safe person. Mostly, anyways. Even if he did have a worrying amount of trust in the Handlers, Supervisor, and Doctor. Cisco knew that he had been caught later, which was evident by the fact that he was unfamiliar with punishments and tests and pain. Barry didn’t even act remotely submissive when he was around Handler Rathaway or the Doctors.

Handler Rathaway was… Strange, for a Handler. Hadn’t made any moves to hit him or punish him even though Cisco knew that he had been Disobedient several times while in his presence. And he was letting Cisco build the dampeners. Handler Rathaway had even brought down some not-poisoned food for him several times. That didn’t necessarily make him a Safe person, but it made him a little less dangerous than a Supervisor.

The Supervisor! Cisco had only met him twice outside of the vision that he had gotten off of Handler Rathaway, but that was enough to know that he was scary and not at all Safe. The Supervisor was  _ never _ Safe. Eiling had been a Supervisor. That meant that Supervisors were bad and would hurt him. Especially this one, it seemed; he had been disappointed in Cisco and had asked him questions that Cisco hadn’t known the answer to. That was bad Supervisor behavior.

The Doctor, Doctor Caitlin, was also strange. Like Handler Rathaway, she hadn’t moved to hurt him even though she had had several chances to and he had been Disobedient while she was watching. Doctor Caitlin had even  _ praised _ him while she was checking him over! That wasn’t very Doctor-like. But she  _ was _ a Doctor, that much Cisco was positive.

But if she was a Doctor and Handler Rathaway was a Handler, what did that make Joe? Because he wasn’t a Supervisor, a Doctor, or a Handler. He didn’t even act much like an Enforcer, either, and he certainly wasn’t an Asset. The very idea of an Asset being someone like Joe was ridiculous. But he hadn’t tried to hurt Cisco either. Or even threatened him. Instead, Joe had given him food and told Cisco that he wasn’t going to hurt him. That he was safe here.

Did that make Joe a Safe person? Cisco didn’t know. But even if he was, Joe wasn’t as Safe as an Asset would have been.

Cisco put the finishing touches on the dampeners (they weren’t as refined as they could have been, but Cisco wasn’t going to push his luck) and tentatively held them out for the Handler’s inspection. “Done, Sir.”

Handler Rathaway accepted them carefully. “That was fast,” he said, a begrudging note of respect in his voice. Cisco hoped that that meant that he wouldn’t be punished for them and that the Handler wouldn’t force him to destroy them. It had been bad enough the first time. Handler Rathaway handed them back to Cisco, who put them in and closed his eyes with relief. “Do you think that you could ever make another pair only modified?”

Cisco blinked at him in confusion. Did the Handler want him to make some for Barry only modified so that they would pipe in painful sound instead of blocking it out?

Handler Rathaway sighed. “Do you know what tinnitus is?”

Cisco hesitated. No, he didn’t, but he couldn’t admit that. This was a test of some kind. Which meant that he had to pass it. After a long moment, Cisco’s shoulders slumped and he bowed his head. “No, Sir. I don’t.”

“Well, the word itself just means ‘a ringing or buzzing in the ears’, but it’s also a medical condition, one that I have,” the Handler explained. “It can be psychological, but in some cases it comes from a head injury or even from a brain tumor.” He tilted his head and tapped his earlobe, making Cisco narrow his eyes as he spotted a glimmering device. “I need these hearing aids in order to stop myself from hearing the sound.”

“You-you want me to make you new ones?” Cisco asked slowly, biting his lower lip and nervously shifting his weight back and forth on the balls of his bare feet.

Handler Rathaway nodded. “If you want. I modified mine-you can look at them if you need a basis of what you want to do since I have a backup pair at home-but they're still pretty fragile and you built those dampeners in...” He checked his watch. "Forty minutes, tops."

Cisco blinked slowly at him. He knew what the Handler really wanted; he wanted Cisco to give him the dampeners that Cisco had just made. Cisco might have had permission to make new ones that were really for himself later, but right now Handler Rathaway wanted him to hand the dampeners over for his own use. So he reached up to his ears and regretfully pulled them out, wincing at the rush of sensory input that flooded his brain even as he held them out for Handler Rathaway to take.

The Handler reached out and closed Cisco’s fingers around the dampeners, making the boy flinch. “I can’t accept those. They’re yours. Put them back in. They wouldn’t even work for me-it’s hard to explain, but they’re two very different problems.”

Cisco Obeyed, wondering what he had done wrong. Then he realized that he had designed those dampeners for  _ himself.  _ They certainly weren’t good enough for a Handler to use. Which meant that he would have to do better next time he was allowed to make them. That way he might get to keep his while also not getting punished for making a subpar pair for Handler Rathaway.

“If you want to make some for me, there’s plenty of time to do that later,” Handler Rathaway continued. “Right now we have to work on a way to stop Snart’s cold gun.” He pulled out what looked like a set of blueprints. “I’ve already drawn up a rough design for a way that we could shield someone from it, but since you’re the one who built it… I want you to look it over first.”

Cisco froze in confusion as the Handler set the papers down onto the table. The Handler wanted him to look over and possibly even  _ correct _ his own designs? No, no, that wasn’t right. Cisco would get in trouble if he tried to correct him.

Handler Rathaway nodded to the papers. “Go ahead. Look through them.”

An Order, that was an Order. Cisco slowly reached forwards (after putting his dampeners back in his ears) and started to flick through them. All but one of the papers had designs for some sort of shield on them, and the one that didn’t had what looked like a rough sketch for the mechanics of the red suit that Barry had been wearing. Was he supposed to correct them? They didn’t really need correcting, did they?

Carefully, Cisco picked up the pencil that the Handler had set down and drew a couple of lines on the design for Barry’s strange suit before crosshatching them and spreading them outwards, labelling them as thermal threading. Handler Rathaway made an impressed sound and Cisco looked at him nervously. But the man didn’t make any moves to hit him.

“I never thought of that. The suit was originally designed to be used by firefighters-I didn’t think of modifying it to be heated,” Handler Rathaway said. “Smart. Good job.”

Praise? The Handler was giving him praise for something that he had done well? Cisco sat up a little bit straighter in his chair. He could do good, he would show them that he was a good boy, a good Asset. That he would be good and do well.

The Handler opened a drawer and Cisco tensed, hoping that there wouldn’t be something in there like a knife or a set of pliers already stained with old blood that Handler Rathaway would use to punish him. But instead the young man just pulled out something like a twisted red rope that was only around six or seven inches in length. Not nearly long enough to strangle anybody. But what else could it have been for?

The Handler held it out invitingly to the seventeen-year-old. “Here. Don’t tell Caitlin, but I like to have something sugary to eat while I work. That way, even if I forget to eat or drink something, I have at least a little bit of energy to keep working.”

Cisco stared at it. What was he supposed to do? Was he supposed to take it? He didn’t understand. Maybe they wanted him to eat it so that he would have at least a little bit of energy to keep working, like Handler Rathaway had said. If he took it and ate it, would he get hit? Punished? Cisco didn’t know, but he  _ was _ hungry, and it didn’t really  _ look _ like poison… So maybe…

Handler Rathaway sighed. “You’re allowed to take it, don’t worry. You can eat it, too.”

Cisco took that as permission and quickly snatched the short red rope out of the Handler’s hand. Eat it, he was supposed to eat it. So he did as he was Ordered and shoved the entire rope into his mouth, starting in surprise at the strange taste and texture. He had been expecting it to taste like sawdust or like, well, rope, but instead it had a weird rubbery texture that he liked the feel of inside of his mouth and tasted vaguely like artificial strawberry and something else.

He remembered that artificial strawberry flavor from Before, but luckily not enough to warrant punishment. Just enough to know what it was supposed to be called and nothing more. Good, because if the Handler ever found out that he remembered something from Before he would get in trouble. Remembering Before was Unforgivable.

Handler Rathaway smiled at Cisco and pulled out another one. “Do you want more?”

Cisco nodded eagerly before flinching back and expecting the Handler to eat it in front of him and tell him that he was lucky that he had gotten anything at all. But instead he just held it out once again and told Cisco to take it. The teenager ate that one as fast as possible too, knowing that he wouldn’t get any more. That was confirmed when Handler Rathaway didn’t offer another red rope.

Cisco and the Handler went back to working on the shields and on Barry’s suit, although Cisco kept shooting the Handler glances to make sure that he hadn’t somehow angered him. Maybe it was because he hadn’t said thank you? Yes, that had to be it! Cisco hadn’t said thank you for Handler Rathaway’s generosity, and now he was going to be punished for it. Or at least he would be later, since Handler Rathaway himself seemed absorbed in his work.

Cisco jumped when the Doctor’s voice spoke up in his ear. “How long have you two been working?”

Cisco shook and folded up onto himself. He hadn’t heard her coming in because the dampeners masked her heartbeat as well as her too-loud-too-loud footsteps. Which meant that he hadn’t been able to show her that he had been doing everything that Handler Rathaway Ordered him and had only made the dampeners with permission from the Handler and not just because he needed them.

The teenager knew that what he wanted, what he needed, didn’t matter at all. Which was why the Doctor had to see that he would never do anything without permission or Orders.

Handler Rathaway looked up from the paper that he was sketching on and shrugged. “I don’t know, around…” He looked at his watch and winced. “Three hours?”

Doctor Caitlin  _ tsked _ and shook her head. Cisco was painfully familiar with that gesture. It meant that she was disappointed. No, no, no, please, he hadn’t meant to disappoint her, please, he was sorry. He hadn’t meant to disappoint her. Cisco would show her that he knew how to be a good Asset. That he knew how to follow Orders.

“I don’t need you passing your bad habits on to Carlos,” Doctor Caitlin scolded Handler Rathaway, who didn’t look particularly phased. Probably because he wasn’t the one who was going to be punished for the misdemeanor. “Mister ‘yes, I ate today Caitlin, and no that totally isn’t a lie because I finally remembered instead of forgetting yet again’.”

This time Handler Rathaway blushed light pink. “I don’t sound like that.”

Cisco watched the two in confusion. Was the Doctor at a higher level than the Handler, even if she was so new? Could she Order him around? Strange. Everything here was weird and different and backwards.

“Well, I ordered pizza for us,” Doctor Caitlin sighed. “Pepperoni and cheese since I didn’t know what Carlos wanted.”

Cisco’s eyes widened. She had wanted to know something and he wasn’t able to provide it? No, no, no no no no he was sorry he was sorry. Please please please he promised that he would do better in the future, he was sorry, he was sorry, please please no.

_ (Eiling slammed the door to Cisco’s cell open and the boy jumped to his feet, curling up as small as he could while still standing upright and at attention. _

_ “Don’t move, brat,” the general sneered, and Cisco shivered as Eiling stomped out of the room. _

_ He knew where Eiling was going and knew what he was coming back with, and please, please, he knew that he probably deserved it but that didn’t mean that he wanted it. Please.  _

_ As Eiling stalked back into the tiny cell, Cisco squeezed his eyes shut for a moment but couldn’t stop them from opening again. Eiling flicked out the tip of the whip and snapped it next to Cisco’s head to make the boy flinch before he let the end of it trail along the cement floor. “It’s time for you to learn a lesson in discipline, freak.”) _

Cisco skittered back until he hit the wall, trying to stay as still as possible so that the two either wouldn’t notice him or wouldn’t think that he was worthy of punishment. Please, please, he wasn’t, he knew that he had failed. He knew that he had Disobeyed. Cisco knew that he deserved to be punished, to be whipped and cut and beaten but  _ please,  _ he didn’t want to-!

“Hey, what’s wrong?” Doctor Caitlin said, standing up from where she had sat down in her chair and walking slowly toward Cisco with her hands by her sides. “Did I scare you? I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to do that. I’m not going to hurt you.”

Lies lies lies lies a trick of some kind. A test. It had to be it had to be it had to be. They were always lying. Handlers and Doctors and Supervisors and Enforcers always lied. The only one that Cisco could trust not to lie was an Asset like him. And Barry wasn’t here, wasn’t here to tell the truth and be like Bette. A good Safe person with a good Safe heartbeat.

The Doctor reached for him slowly and Cisco couldn’t stop the whimper that escaped him as he held himself tighter against the wall. Please please please oh god he didn’t want to please please god no he didn’t want to-please don’t hurt him, please don’t do anything.

“I won’t touch you if you don’t want me to,” Doctor Caitlin murmured, eyes soft with sympathy. “Don’t worry.”

Cisco kept himself where he was. Please please please he didn’t want to-

Handler Rathaway’s phone suddenly beeped loudly and frantically, the sound invading Cisco’s ears even through the dampeners. Doctor Caitlin wheeled around and placed her hands on her hips. “Hartley-”

Handler Rathaway took off past her, calling over his shoulder as he went. “Barry’s vitals are bottoming out! I have an alarm set for that!”

Doctor Caitlin swore softly and took off after him, leaving Cisco with no choice but to follow them.

Had they done a test and now Barry was severely hurt? Had they accidentally done something that they hadn’t mean to and now Barry was injured or  _ worse?  _ No, no, Barry was Safe, he had to be alright, he had to be okay. And what if… The Supervisor and the Handlers couldn’t have Ordered him to harm himself, could they?  _ Could they? _ Would these new backwards people do that? Eiling had. Many times.

The Doctor and the Handler ran into a room that Cisco hadn’t been in yet (at least not physically, since he recognized it from a vision), although it looked like it was usually populated by people who would monitor all of the tests. The Supervisor himself was nowhere to be seen, and Joe wasn’t there either. Cisco couldn’t decide if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

Barry was lying in a crumpled red heap in the center of the room, and Cisco froze when he realized that not all of it was from the older Asset’s scarlet suit. Doctor Caitlin made a small sound of fear and horror as she knelt down beside him, carefully rolling him over and tugging his cowl back to reveal blood dripping down from the corner of the man’s mouth. “Barry!”

Handler Rathaway swore under his breath and Cisco started to shake. No, no, the Doctor would hurt Barry even more, she would make everything so much worse and then he would die and the Supervisor would be mad and then he would Order the Handlers and the Doctors to hurt Cisco because Barry was gone-

The teenager couldn’t stop himself from throwing himself forwards, roughly shoving the Doctor away as he stood in front of Barry, who still wasn’t moving wasn’t moving wasn’t moving why wasn’t he moving he should have been moving please please wake up please. Cisco glared weakly at the Doctor and at Handler Rathaway, small ripples of power swirling around his fingers as he stayed where he was and didn’t back down.

Cisco wouldn’t let them hurt Barry. He couldn’t.

Doctor Caitlin stepped forwards, and Cisco forced himself to stay still no matter how much he wanted to move away. “Ki-Carlos, you have to move. Barry’s hurt. You need to move, alright? If you don’t move, it will be much harder for him to heal and it will be a lot more painful. You have to move, Carlos.”

Cisco shook his head. He couldn’t let them he couldn’t let them they would hurt Barry they would hurt him please he couldn’t let that happen. He couldn’t let them do that. Assets had to protect each other, always. Cisco had to protect Barry. He had to he had to he had to-

Behind him, Barry groaned softly and his eyes cracked open into green sea glass slits. Cisco took another step back in his direction. Had to protect. Had to protect. Had to stick together had to had to had to.

Doctor Caitlin took a deep breath-and then she was  _ pushing past Cisco,  _ no no no no no no please-

All of the teenager’s nerve lost him, and even as he sent a silent apology to Barry and tried to force himself to stay as still as possible he was up and running, heart pounding against his ribs as he tried to find a safe place to hide out where the Handlers and the Doctors wouldn’t be able to find him and punish him for being a bad Asset, for being Disobedient.

He found that safe place crammed beneath a desk and a wall, curled up as small as possible where they hopefully wouldn’t be able to find him.

Cisco knew that he had been bad, so bad, a Disobedient Asset. And Disobedient Assets deserved to be punished. Hadn’t that been what Eiling had been literally pounding into his head for years? Now Cisco had Disobeyed. Now he deserved whatever they would do to him.

He wondered what it would be. What they would do first. Hold him down under icy or hot water? Brand him, surely. Whip him. Slowly make slices up and down his skin and tell him that he deserved it. Pin him down to the table and let him tire himself out struggling against the bindings before advancing slowly while wielding scalpels and forceps. Maybe they would make him fight Barry the way that Eiling had made him fight Bette. Would they force him to use his sonic blasts even as they literally tore apart his skin?

Or maybe they would do none of those. Maybe, instead, they would do something that Eiling had been threatening for a while and cut out his tongue. Perhaps they would even do something completely different, something that Eiling had never done or even threatened to do. Like… Like… Well, Cisco didn’t really know, but he was sure that it would be very very bad.

Cisco was so lost in his thoughts and in his fear that he didn’t hear the footsteps that walked up to him and stopped as the person that they belonged to crouched down in front of him. But he did hear their voice, and it caused him to cower away in an attempt to stay even smaller than he already was so that Handler Rathaway wouldn’t think that he was being even more Disobedient than he already had been. “Can I come any closer?”

Cisco whimpered and tried to hide behind the desk.

“That’s a no, then. Okay, I won’t come any closer.”

Cisco tried to stay still. Now that Handler Rathaway had found him, he would beat him into the ground and then pull out a whip. Or maybe the Handler wouldn’t even wait to go out and get one. Maybe Handler Rathaway would just use his belt. Eiling had never done that, but some of the Enforcers had. It had been bad when the buckle caught on his skin, but that was okay. It was better than the whip. (Although not by much.)

But when the seventeen-year-old dared to peeked out through his fingertips, Handler Rathaway… Was… Reading? Leaning back against the wall, a book in his hands about theoretical physics. No knives. No whips. He hadn’t even taken off his belt. Just… Just reading. Like he  _ wasn’t _ a Handler. Like he wasn’t anything, any job at the facility. Cisco didn’t understand. Why hadn’t any punishment started?

The Handler looked up from his book. “Hey.”

The teenager ducked his head back down into his shoulders. He was sorry, he was sorry, he was sorry, he wouldn’t do anything else Disobedient. Cisco would be a good little Asset. A good boy. A perfect Asset.

“Are you okay?” Handler Rathaway asked. “Caitlin didn’t push you very hard, and she feels really bad, but… She wants to talk to you.”

Cisco shivered. He knew what that was. That was an Order for punishment. He would take it. He had to be brave. He would keep his head up. Take what he deserved.

Handler Rathaway stood up, folding down the corner of one of his pages and closing the book as he tucked it up under his arm. “Come on. Caitlin and Barry want to see you.”

Cisco followed Obediently, following Handler Rathaway after unfolding himself from his hiding place. The teenager made sure to keep his head bowed and his hands behind his back at all times. That was the way that he was supposed to stand so that the Handlers and the Supervisors knew that he respected them and understood that they were better than him.

They went back to the same room as before; a bed had been wheeled into it. The same one from Cisco’s vision. The Supervisor was there too, oh no no no no please. He didn’t want to… If they had called the Supervisor, that meant that Cisco was in even more trouble than he had thought. If this Supervisor was anything at all like Eiling… Then Cisco  _ knew _ that he probably enjoyed delivering all sorts of painful punishments.

Then his eyes landed on Barry, and Cisco couldn’t stop himself from rocking up onto the balls of his feet and staring at his fellow Asset. Barry… Barry was okay. And that meant that Cisco had succeeded. They hadn’t had a chance to hurt Barry. Which meant that Cisco had done well, at least in his own mind. The Handlers and the Doctors and the Supervisor probably didn’t think so.

Barry smiled at him weakly as the Doctor flitted around him, attaching some sort of device to his arm. “What did you even hit?” She scolded him, and Cisco quailed. “Your arm would be probably be permanently damaged if you didn’t heal so fast. And even though you do, it’s still going to take you a few hours to heal.”

Barry looked away from Cisco and winced. “Ow. Uh, a man. Like… A really big man. But when I hit him, it felt like I hit a wall. His skin, it changed. Became like steel, almost.”

Doctor Caitlin sighed and stepped back. “Well, no more punching steel men for you for a while, okay?” She turned around and spotted Cisco, who flinched back only to stop and jump forwards again when he accidentally bumped into Handler Rathaway. “Hartley, you found him.”

The Handler nodded and the Doctor walked forward until she was directly in front of Cisco. He tried to make himself small. He wasn’t sorry for what he did, for protecting Barry from them so that they couldn’t hurt him. But that didn’t mean that he wasn’t still terrified of punishment. Because it was coming, surely it was coming. It had to be coming.

Doctor Caitlin knelt down in front of Cisco. “Please don’t do that, okay? Don’t try to get between me and my patient. We got lucky this time. If the injuries had been worse, and you tried to stop me from getting to him in time, Barry could have died. As it is, his arm in broken in several places and he has quite a few internal injuries that are already healing. But the next time that Barry gets hurt you can’t try to keep me away from him.”

No, no, they had hurt him even more because Cisco had interfered, this was wasn’t what he had wanted, please, he had tried to be good, he had tried, he was sorry, he was sorry, please don’t hurt him or Barry any more.

“Yeah,” Barry added, swinging his legs off of the side of the bed with a small groan of pain and effort. “Caitlin’s trying to keep me alive. Without her I would have been dead during, like, week three. Not even that; she’s basically the only reason that I didn’t die in my coma.”

Cisco blinked a few times. Barry was crediting a  _ Doctor _ with his survival? Cisco knew that Barry probably didn’t want Cisco trying to protect him because it would just make the punishment worse for both of them, but why was he saying that Doctor Caitlin was the only reason that he was alive? Surely because she just wanted to do more tests on him. On  _ them,  _ now.

“Right,”  Doctor Caitlin said, shooting Barry a small look of grateful surprise that Cisco didn’t really understand. “Which is why you can’t try to stop me from helping him. Do you understand that, Carlos?”

Cisco nodded solemnly. “Y-yes Ma’am.”

“You don’t have to call me Ma’am,” Doctor Caitlin dismissed. “Just Caitlin is fine.”

“Yes Ma-I mean, yes, Doctor Caitlin,” Cisco said nervously. This was like what Handler Rathaway had said. To call him by a name instead of ‘Sir’ like Cisco had been taught. “I understand. I’ll do better next time, I promise. I’ll do my best to be good.”

Before Cisco could move away, the Doctor smiled at him gently. “That’s all I ask for.”

Handler Rathaway cleared his throat. “I’m going to take Carlos back to his cell, if that’s alright with all of you.”

Cisco frowned slightly. Going back to the cell? The soft cell with lots of light and no chains or spikes coming out of the walls to prick and stab at him if he made a wrong move? That wasn’t much of a punishment. Maybe the Handler was going to handcuff him and then beat him. Or bring out the chains and attach him to the walls now that he had permission. Cisco didn’t know, but he wanted to stay with Barry. He wanted to make sure that Barry was okay. That nobody had hurt him after Cisco left.

“Carlos?” Handler Rathaway asked, and Cisco jumped when he remembered that that was the name that they had given him instead of a number. “Do you want to go back down to your cell in the Pipeline?”

He nibbled his lip. There was clearly a right answer to that question, and it was “yes, Sir,” but… But Cisco had to make sure that nothing happened to Barry. Assets had to stick together. They had to help each other. Which meant that nobody had to be left alone with the Handlers and the Doctors and the Supervisor. Never.

“You can stay up here if you want,” Handler Rathaway offered, and Cisco dipped his head. He wanted to, he really did, but what if it was taken as him being Disobedient? What if they thought that he was trying to defy Orders?

“Yes, Handler Rathaway,” he said softly. “I-I would like to stay up here, Sir.”

The Handler nodded. “Fine. You can stay up here.”

Cisco immediately brightened. They were-they were actually letting him stay? They weren’t going to do anything bad to hurt him yet? Really? He looked over at Barry who nodded and sped over to him (and Cisco still didn’t know why they hadn’t punished him for that) in a blur before kneeling down beside him and gently setting one hand (the one that wasn’t broken) on Cisco’s shoulder.

“Nobody here will hurt you, alright?” Barry said. Lie lie lie lie lie lie. “We aren’t like the people who had you before. We would  _ never _ do anything to hurt you, don’t worry.  _ Never.” _

Cisco didn’t believe that. And he didn’t understand how Barry  _ could _ . Didn’t he realize that the Supervisor was watching them? That the Doctor was right there? That Handler Rathaway still hadn’t looked away from where Cisco was waiting for punishment? Wasn’t he afraid that any wrong move he made would be punishable?

Why wasn’t Barry afraid?

_ (“Again.” _

_ Cisco looked up from where he was lying on the floor, chest heaving as his arms bled from various wounds caused by power quite literally pushing itself out of him. Taking a few choked breaths, he raised his hands, bracing himself for the pain as weak translucent spirals of energy was forced from his palms, causing them to bleed anew. _

_ “Again.”) _

“You’re safe here,” Barry said quietly. “You’re safe now. Nobody will hurt you again.”

Lie. It had to be.

Handler Rathaway cleared his throat. “I don’t want to interrupt, but how are we going to find our latest metahuman criminal?”

Barry didn’t look away from Cisco as he spoke. “I don’t know. But something that he said… It almost seemed familiar. Like I’d met him before. I didn’t recognize him, though.”

“We’ll worry about that later,” Doctor Caitlin promised. “Right now, Barry, you need to focus healing.”

The older Asset nodded. “I will. Don’t worry,” he added for Cisco’s benefit, “I heal really fast.”

Cisco blinked. But that just meant more tests. That just meant that they could do worse things to him because if Barry could heal quickly then they could break his bones as many times as they wanted. Rip him apart as many times as they needed. Pull out his organs and then study the way that they healed. Eiling would have done that. Eiling would have brought Barry to the brink of death the way that he had done with Cisco so many times before just to deny him the relief and let him heal.

Why didn’t these people do that too?

Then Cisco’s thoughts turned to an equally pressing matter. They had said that they wanted to find a “metahuman”. But that was just another word for Asset. Had one of their Assets escaped? It didn’t sound like it. It sounded more like there was a rogue Asset on the loose, one that had escaped from its Handlers and was now running rampant. Were those the kind of Assets that Barry hunted?

Would they make Cisco do that too? He didn’t want to, he knew that they would punish him but please, please, he didn’t want to, it would be bad and scary and not right at all. Assets had to look out for each other. Assets had to stick together. They should only fight when they were Ordered to by the Supervisor or by their Handlers. Not when one escaped and ran away.

Like Cisco and Bette had.

They had said that Eiling was the one to kill Bette, but they must have been lying. Cisco wondered if they had done it to put Barry in his place. To show him that nobody was safe. Show him that just because he was valuable didn’t mean that they wouldn’t kill him.

Cisco closed his eyes. Bette was-had been too good to die like that, as a lesson for another Asset to learn. She shouldn’t have died at all, but especially not like that.

Barry, meanwhile, seemed to be trying to have a conversation with the Supervisor entirely with his eyes. Cisco looked back and forth between them in confusion before Barry sighed and threw a hand (the one that wasn’t in a sling) up into the air before turning back around to look at Cisco.

The tall man looked at the teen. “I think you might have to go back down to your cell. Sorry about that, but the rest of us kind of need to talk.”

Cisco nodded and stood Obediently still as Handler Rathaway exchanged a significant look with Barry as the other Asset stepped back and let the Handler take his place. “I’ll take you down.”

* * *

Cisco was awake the next time that Barry came down to see him. He had stayed Obediently still, completely frozen where Handler Rathaway had left him. That was what the Handler had seemed to want, after all, and Cisco’s purpose in life was to Obey and to be an Asset.

Barry tapped the code in and opened the door to Cisco’s cell. The younger Asset wondered if he had permission from the Supervisor to know all the codes and to visit Cisco. Probably.

Barry smiled and set a paper bag down on the floor. “I brought you some stuff!”

Cisco stiffened and looked up at the small security camera in the corner. What kind of test was this? Was Barry going to show him things that the Supervisor had told him to buy and then watch him to see if he refused to take them? And if he  _ did _ try to take them, Cisco would be punished? Was it that kind of test?

“Caitlin noticed that you didn’t have any socks or shoes, so we were worried that your feet might have been cold,” Barry said, reaching into the paper bag and pulling out something that was a cheery green. Cisco blinked at it. A gag, something to strangle him, a punishment? He didn’t know what it was. Barry grinned at him, although it seemed a little forced. “So I bought you socks.”

Socks? Barry had brought him socks? Cisco knew what socks were, of course he did, but he hadn’t owned any in so long. Maybe Barry was giving them to him as a thank you gift for rescuing him and protecting him from the Handlers and the Doctor. But where had Barry gotten the money? Was he brave and fast and bold enough to steal from the Supervisor and then sneak out to buy himself food and stuff like socks?

“I bought a bunch of pairs so that you could wear them even after they got dirty and we had to wash them,” Barry explained, pulling out several other sets of socks and putting them on the floor of the cell. Cisco couldn’t stop himself from leaning forward to look at them curiously. He-he missed socks. He knew that. He missed colorful soft things on his feet that never ever matched because they were just plain  _ better _ that way. “You can come closer and look at them if you want.”

Slowly, Cisco crept up to the socks. There were six pairs, which meant that he could mix and match them quite a bit (Cisco may not have known it, but Barry had done that on purpose). There was a pair patterned with fat happy bumblebees, a pair with red and white balls on it that had little black bands around their middles, a light yellow pair that was decorated with red lightning bolts, two pairs that were plain white with black and grey stripes respectively, another pair with bees although these ones were pink instead of green, three pairs of ones with different colorful creatures that Cisco didn’t recognize, and three with rainbows on them.

Cisco reached out and carefully stroked one of them, the lightning bolt ones. They were soft and nice and he couldn’t imagine how amazing they would feel on his feet. But… He couldn’t wear them. Barry had risked his safety to get them. Which meant that Cisco couldn’t put him in any more danger by wearing them around the facility. Then the Supervisor and the Handlers and the Doctors would all see and know that Barry had been bad.

“Do you like them?” Barry asked, smiling gently as he watched the teenager’s wonder at something so simple.

Cisco looked up and tried to mimic Barry’s smile, nodding over and over again as he tried to express his gratitude. “Th-thank you, Sir! Thank you so much! Thank you, thank you, Sir-I mean,” Cisco rushed to correct himself at Barry’s crestfallen expression. “Thank you, Barry.”

Barry reached out carefully and lightly squeezed Cisco’s shoulder. “It was no problem. I’m glad you like them.”

Cisco sat back and pulled his knees up to his chest. “H-how did you get the money for it?”

Barry copied his example. “I work for the police-so does Joe, by the way-so I have a steady source of income. Caitlin chips in for food sometimes because I eat so much, though, even if I’ve told her that she doesn’t have to. Hartley can’t; he doesn’t really use his paycheck for anything outside of electricity and water and stuff.”

Cisco blinked a few times. He knew who the police were. They protected people, they helped people. But how did Barry  _ work _ for them? Even if the police didn’t know that he was an Asset (even though Joe seemed to, and wouldn’t they notice that he was marked as belonging to the people at this facility?), surely the Supervisor wouldn’t let him leave to do actual work. That wasn’t allowed.

Unless… Unless the people at this facility, at STAR Labs, were trying to pretend that what they were doing was legal? Or maybe it was. Eiling had worked for the government, after all. Maybe everything that he had ever done to Cisco was completely legal? That would make sense.

“You work for the police?” Cisco asked, tilting his head to one side. “How?”

“Hey, you didn’t stutter that time!” Barry acknowledged happily. “And I work for the police as a CSI. I do all sorts of forensic stuff.”

Cisco screwed up his face in confusion. What did forensic mean? Was that like… Like weapons testing? Did they test weapons on Barry, use him for target practice the way that they had for Cisco? “Wh-what does forensic mean?”

“Like criminal science,” Barry explained. “I analyze crime scenes to see if there’s any evidence for who committed the crime. Then I run that evidence to make sure that it’s real and wasn’t tampered with or anything by an officer or by the criminal or by a bystander, and after a  _ lot _ more stuff that helps us catch whoever did the crime. If it’s not a metahuman, they’ll go to prison after a trial. But if it is a metahuman, I’ll try to capture them and bring them to STAR Labs.”

Cisco shuddered. Being captured by a fellow Asset after finally thinking that you were free, maybe even trusting that Asset not to turn you over, only to have them lock you up in a cell, even if it was a very roomy and comfortable cell… Horrible. Why would Barry do that? Did they have leverage against him? A family member, another Asset that he cared for? Was that why he did it?

The seventeen year old let out a small squeak of surprise as lightning flashed in his eyes and Barry moved at superspeed from across from him to beside him. Cisco threw himself back, cowering back and trying to cover his face with his arms to protect it. He had been wrong, Barry wasn’t good, Barry was bad, and now Cisco had broken the new Rules and he would be hurt, please please please he was sorry he was so so so sorry.

“Oh, god, I’m sorry, I thought-it was stupid, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,” Barry rambled. Cisco peered up at him through the gap in his arms and tried to see if Barry was getting something like a whip or undoing his belt. But the older Asset had returned to the outside of the cell, hands waving frantically as Cisco cowered back. “I’m sorry! I won’t hurt you, I promise. I didn’t mean to scare you, kid-Carlos. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

Cisco tried to calm his frantically racing heart down. Barry wouldn’t hurt him. No matter how backwards the Rules were here, some things were still the same. Like the fact that other Assets were Safe people. That would never change, no matter what. “S-sorry.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” Barry said, shaking his head. “I’m the one who moved without telling you and scared you.”

Cisco didn’t say anything as he tried to think of a way to ask if the Supervisor had anything that he could use as leverage against Barry without alerting anybody who was possibly watching on the security cameras. “Do-do you have a family?”

Barry blinked at the abrupt change in subject. “Uh, yeah, I do. Joe’s my foster father, and then there’s Iris, and my dad, and-that’s it.”

Cisco stared at him.  _ Joe _ was Barry’s foster father? But… But Joe was okay with the things that the Supervisor and the Handlers and the Doctors did to him. If Barry was really his son, wouldn’t he be not okay with that? Or mad? Maybe a foster father was different in that regard, although Cisco had never found that to be true during his experiences with foster kids and their parents. They had been real parents, just usually temporary.

“You’d like Iris,” Barry continued. “She’s a really great person. And my dad, I think. But he’s-he  _ was _ a doctor, and you seem pretty scared of Caitlin, so I dunno.”

Cisco’s eyes stretched wide. Barry’s father was a  _ Doctor? _ Then why-but-how could Barry trust him at all? It just didn’t make any sense. Everything about this facility was wrong and backwards and so so so so so strange. Cisco didn’t know what to think.

Maybe… Maybe the Doctor who Barry said was his dad had been the one to do this? To make him into an Asset like Cisco? And then-and then he had handed him over to the Supervisor, to these people at STAR Labs that had backwards strange Rules and left him. Doctors were cruel, but family was supposed to protect you. But Cisco didn’t think that Doctors cared.

“A Doctor?” Cisco gasped, studying Barry’s face and neck and hands for any signs of previous wounds. But he couldn’t find any. That was right, Barry had said that he healed fast. Which must have meant that he didn’t scar, either. But did that mean that no matter what the Doctors and Handlers did to him, he wouldn’t have any scars? Cisco didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing. It was good because then it wouldn’t hurt anymore, but it was bad because then they would do so many more tests on you.

Barry nodded in confirmation. “Yep. But he had to stop after… Well. You don’t have to hear that story now. It’s pretty long.”

Cisco heard the message. He had to stop after he created Barry. After someone found out that he had made an Asset. Was that when Joe had taken him and given him to the people at this facility? After people found out that he had created an Asset, what had happened to Barry’s father? Was he still here at STAR Labs? Would he be the one to do the experiments on Cisco instead of Doctor Caitlin?

There were too many questions. And Cisco knew that he wasn’t going to get any answers from Barry. Why would he?

Barry reached out and gently squeezed Cisco’s shoulder. ‘“It’s okay. Get some rest, alright? You’re allowed to move around the cell and sleep if you want.”

Cisco nodded and lowered his gaze. He understood. They would want to creep up on him in his sleep and wake him up when he had a nightmare so that they could use it to hurt him.

He understood.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "A hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles."--Christopher Reeve

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey!!! i know i've been updating FStCY before this but that story is taking forever for me to write so here. have a chapter. but there won't be another one for awhile after this since...i don't actually have the next one written. it's partially done but not all of the way. 
> 
> warnings for force-feeding, beatings, experimentation, and a lot of other messed up stuff, so be careful, okay?

“Your schoolyard bully is now a metahuman criminal?” Hartley wrinkled his nose. “That’s ironic.”

Barry nodded. “I had a lot of bullies when I was younger. Honestly, I’m pretty sure that it was bound to happen.”

“I had some bullies too,” Caitlin supplied. “They used to put gum in my hair.”

Barry blinked at her as Hartley chimed in. “I had my fair share of bullies growing up. I was small, had rich parents, wore glasses, usually had my nose stuck in a book that was bigger than they were, and, although I myself didn’t really know it at the time, gay. Pretty much the perfect target.”

Barry sighed. “Well, now that we’ve established that we’re all nerds”-Hartley gave him a dirty look and muttered something under his breath-“what are we going to do about Tony?”

Hartley sighed. “Fighting is physics, Allen. Use your brain. I’m sure you’ll figure something out. I’m going to check on the kid.”

As he turned to leave, Caitlin stopped him. “You went down last time and he was still asleep. Let me check. You two try to find a way to stop Woodward.”

Hartley stood back to let her pass as Caitlin moved by him, heading down to the Pipeline where, unbeknownst to them, their newest metahuman was waking up.

* * *

Cisco sat bolt upright as he tried to act like he hadn’t just been sleeping when he saw that the door to his cell was opening. Luckily, he had already hidden the socks that Barry had brought down for him, so he couldn’t get in any trouble for having them. Of course, they weren’t exactly hidden well, and instead were piled up in the corner along with the food that he had saved underneath the blanket that Handler Rathaway had left with him.

His eyes widened when he saw that the person coming wasn’t a Handler or an Asset. Instead, it was the Doctor-Doctor Caitlin. No, no, that meant that it was time for a test, that meant that it was time for them to take him up to the medbay and Order him to lie on the table before doing up the straps on his arms and legs and neck and cutting him open before peeling back his skin and studying his organs. Cisco didn’t-he didn’t want to-

_ (Cisco fought against the straps that dug into his wrists and ankles and neck as Eiling did up the one around his waist. The general sighed and slapped him in the face, momentarily making the teenager stop struggling before immediately resuming the action, desperately trying to get away no matter how futile he knew that his efforts were. _

_ Eiling sighed and signalled to the people around him. Several of them advanced on Cisco and grabbed his arms and legs before holding his head to keep it immobile. Cisco stared up at them with pleading dark brown eyes. He knew that there was only one reason why they wouldn’t have gagged him for the procedure. Only one thing that they could have been doing. _

_ “Please,” he choked out. “Please, I don’t want to, I’ll be good, I’ll be good, I promise I’ll be good-” _

_ Latex-gloved fingers pried his mouth open, holding his jaws apart even as Cisco tried to bite their fingers and get away. Please, please, please, he didn’t want to- _

_ The pipe that was shoved into his mouth made Cisco convulse, trying to retch but unable to do so because of the straps and because of the people pinning him down to the table. The pipe was slowly pushed farther and farther down into Cisco’s mouth, down his throat toward his stomach. He kept trying to fight, trying to pull the pipe out, but he couldn’t-he couldn’t- _

_ Cisco barely had time to brace himself before Eiling set a funnel against the mouth of the pipe that wasn’t inside of Cisco’s esophagus.) _

Doctor Caitlin knelt down outside just inside of Cisco’s cell, hands at her sides with the palms upturned. “I’m glad you’re awake,” she said softly. “You weren’t last time we checked up on you down here.”

Last time he had been asleep? No, no, no no no no no he was sorry he hadn’t meant to sleep. Yes, Barry had given him permission, but that didn’t count. It never counted. It never counted. “I’m sorry, Ma-Doctor Caitlin. I know you didn’t give m-me any permission-”

“You don’t need permission to sleep,” Doctor Caitlin said. “If you’re tired, you can sleep. Simple as that.” Doctor Caitlin looked around. “Where are your socks? Why aren’t you wearing them?”

Socks? She knew about the socks? But that meant that they had been watched over the security camera. That meant that they knew that Barry had been the one to give the socks to Cisco. That meant-that meant that now they would punish both Barry and Cisco for what happened, and that meant that it was all his fault. All his fault.

“It’s my fault,” Cisco blurted out. “It’s not-it’s not Barry’s fault. Don’t punish him, it’s all my fault. It’s all my fault.”

“No, no, the socks are for you,” the Doctor rushed to say. “You’re allowed to have them and you’re allowed to wear them. You can put a pair on right now if you want.”

Cisco looked at her unsurely. But that was an Order of some sort, and that meant that he had to Obey or else there would be consequences. Hesitantly, he crept over to the blanket and reached under it, pulling out a pair of socks-the ones with the red lightning bolts. Doctor Caitlin smiled as soon as she saw those, although it wasn’t unkind. Not like Eiling’s laughter.

Cisco pulled them up onto his feet, eyes widening as he wiggled his toes. They were soft and nice and he  _ loved  _ them. “Th-thank you.”

Doctor Caitlin smiled at him. “It’s no trouble.” She sighed and watched him curiously for a moment as Cisco stared at his toes, wriggling them excitedly. “Ronnie would have liked you.”

Cisco jumped and stared at her. Had to show her that he really was paying attention, that he really was listening to her and paying attention and being a good Asset like he had been taught. Doctor Caitlin closed her eyes.

“Ronnie is- _ was _ my fiancé,” the Doctor murmured. Cisco tilted his head to one side as she continued. “He-he died, around ten months ago. He was a structural engineer. You would have liked him a lot, I think, once you got to know him. Ronnie could even make Hartley laugh. Which is an accomplishment, believe me.”

Cisco blinked, eyes widening slowly. Doctors didn’t care about people. They never cared about anybody except themselves. But… But this Doctor seemed to. She was talking about her fiancé, after all, and that was somebody that she had cared about quite a bit.

Had he been a Handler? He probably had been. Cisco knew that sometimes Doctors and Handlers married each other. Maybe even Handlers and Supervisors or Doctors and Supervisors. But if Doctor Caitlin said that Handler Ronnie would have liked him… Did she mean that he would have liked to do tests on him? Liked to punish him? Cisco didn’t know.

He shivered and watched as the Doctor wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and stood up, taking a shaky deep breath. “I’m going back up to the Cortex. The door is open for a reason; you can come in and out of the cell if you want. Go back to sleep if you need to.”

Cisco watched her leave, hugging his knees up to his chest and wiggling his toes again. It was so so soft… It was so good to have socks again. Even if he knew that they would be taken away as punishment later.

The seventeen-year-old flexed his fingers and studied the scars and callouses on his hands. Most of the scars were tidy and surgical. Precise. Eiling had liked to cut open his hands and fingers to see if they were different than normal. Peeling them apart with metal tools and dissecting them while Cisco was gagged and tied down to a table so that he was completely unable to beg or struggle.

The scars wrapped up his wrist and then around his shoulder, clustering on his back and then wrapping down his hips and coiling in spirals down his legs. They jumped and stopped and started, some of them older or newer than others. From whips and blades and acidic liquids and burnings. Everything that you could possibly imagine that could be used to harm him or test him in some way had been done by Eiling and his Handlers at the facility.

Which meant that Cisco had to be on constant alert, because surely it would happen here as well.

He closed his eyes and took several deep breaths. Everything had spun out of control so fast. Even though he had always been captured and caught and caged and collared and not allowed to move without permission, at least that was familiar. At least pain and fear and terror was familiar and normal and something that he was used to. But these people were letting both him and Barry move around and eat and drink and speak. Why? Why were they doing this?

Cisco made a small sound of fear as he looked up at the security camera in the upper corner of the large cell. Were they watching him right now, making little notes in their bad bad bad files and consulting with each other? Did they want to make sure that he didn’t move and didn’t listen to what the Doctor had said because she wasn’t a Supervisor? Or was there really nobody there at all?

The teenager jumped and looked around as he felt rather than saw Barry walk up to his cell. The tall Asset looked at him with concern. “Hey, are you okay? You’ve been down here for hours and you haven’t moved at all.”

Good, good, that was very good. Cisco had been practicing staying frozen for a long time, and he was always glad when it paid off and he wasn’t injured because he had dared to move without permission. But Barry wasn’t acting like it was good. Barry was acting like it might have been punishable. Was he trying to warn Cisco that the Handlers would be angry if Cisco didn’t move without alerting whoever might have been watching over the security cameras.

“I-I’m sorry,” Cisco gasped, looking up at the camera and cowering away. “I’ll try to be better.”

“No, no,” Barry rushed to say, tripping over his own words, “I just was wondering why. You don’t have to move if you don’t want to.”

Cisco blinked a few time. That didn’t make any sense. “O-okay.”

Barry smiled. “Can I sit down next to you? Would that be okay?”

Cisco hesitated for a moment before nodding slowly and carefully. Barry wouldn’t hurt him. Barry was an Asset like Cisco. Barry was the only remotely Safe person at the entire facility. And that meant that it would be okay if he sat down next to Cisco.

The speedster beamed and vanished before reappearing at Cisco’s side. The boy jumped, startled, but forced himself to calm down when Barry immediately looked incredibly guilty. The older Asset leaned back against the wall of the cell (which Cisco had yet to check for spikes, so he was relieved to see that Barry was safe and sound and unharmed) and smiled gently at Cisco.

Cisco bit his lip as he tried to think of something to do to show Barry that while he was still scared of him, he understood that he wouldn’t hurt him. Coming up with nothing, the teenager leaned against the wall as well, one of his hands accidentally brushing against Barry’s arm.

In two seconds, he was plunged into a vision.

_ Barry slumped against the table that Cisco had seen before, the white one with all of the computers and screens that monitored things like heart rate and blood pressure and what the next test was doing to you. He was wearing the red suit but with the cowl part of it pulled back, face slicked with sweat and eyes wide and panicked. _

_ Barry gestured wildly at the Supervisor and at Handler Rathaway, who was already moving as if to stand. “I can’t breathe,” Barry choked out. “I can’t breathe.” _

_ “He needs oxygen,” the Supervisor Ordered, looking at Handler Rathaway, who was already running toward the place where Doctor Caitlin had checked Cisco over but hadn’t done any tests. “Get the crash cart!” _

_ Barry meanwhile, kept writhing in the Supervisor’s grasp as the Handler returned and grabbed his arms, lugging him toward what looked like a  _ (bad scary no please) _ medical bed. Handler Rathaway pulled open the seam of Barry’s red suit before pulling something out and running it down Barry’s bare chest for some reason. The Doctor ran up, eyes wide, and Barry gestured to his chest while still struggling to breath. _

_ “Cut me open,” he rasped, and Cisco’s eyes widened as he unconsciously stepped closer to the scene before him, wary of being caught despite knowing that it was only a vision. On the bed, Barry looked at the Supervisor. “The poison’s still in me.” _

_ The Supervisor looked over the Asset at Handler Rathaway and Doctor Caitlin. “He brought us a sample. We need to do a pulmonary biopsy. Extract an active portion of that gas.” _

_ Cisco’s eyes widened as Handler Rathaway turned around and picked up what looked like a large needle. No no no no what were they going to do with that? What were they going to do to Barry? _

_ Doctor Caitlin leaned over Barry and looked down at him. “I can’t give you any anesthetic. Your metabolism will burn right through it.” _

_ “I heal quick,” Barry choked out. He was growing weaker by the second. “Remember?” _

_ “Do it,” the Supervisor Ordered. _

_ Doctor Caitlin sighed and looked at Handler Rathaway. “Hartley, give me the syringe. Sorry, Barry, but this is going to hurt. A lot.” _

_ “Already on it,” Handler Rathaway sighed, handing the syringe to her. Cisco’s eyes widened when he saw how big the needle was. _

_ Doctor Caitlin turned around, and just as she was about to stab it into Barry- _

Cisco gasped and jerked back, colliding with the wall and wincing in pain as he tried to scramble away from Barry. Last time he had been lucky enough to get off with only a minor punishment, but this time when Barry told the Supervisor that Cisco had used his powers without permission he would be punished severely. Thrown in the pit and dunked under ice water. Both at the same time.

He stopped and tried to listen to Barry’s breathing. There was none of the rasping that belied an injury, no coughing and no choking. Only quick concern to match it safe safe safe heartbeat. Maybe what Cisco had seen was a Possibility of something that might happen in the future? In that case, he had to warn Barry, he had to let him know that they would trap him in a room and slowly fill it with gas before stabbing him in the chest in order to ‘save’ him.

“You can’t!” Cisco cried, startling both Barry and himself with his loud outburst. “They’ll lock you up and poison you and you can’t, please, they’ll hurt you they’ll gas you they’ll stab you please-”

“Whoa, whoa, calm down, alright?” Barry said, leaning forward onto his knees toward Cisco. “What’s wrong? Did you use your powers and see something?”

Cisco nodded. “There was gas and you were dying and they had to hurt you with a needle to save you and-and-and-"

“Slow down,” Barry interrupted him, setting his hands firmly but not painfully on Cisco’s shoulders. “Just take a few deep breaths, with me. Can you do that? In… And out. In…” Barry took a deep breath and counted to seven before releasing it for the count of nine. “And out.”

Cisco Obeyed dutifully, relaxing slightly despite still panicking in the aftermath of the vision-the ‘vibe’ as Eiling had sometimes called them.

“Very good,” Barry encouraged. “Now, you said that you saw something about gas? Me being gassed?” His eyes narrowed. “Nimbus?”

Cisco blinked. Was that the kind of gas that they had used to hurt him? Or  _ would _ use to hurt him, if it was one of the future Possibilities? He shuddered. It had looked dangerous and scary and painful and awful. And even when she had been keeping him alive, bringing Barry back from the brink of death in order to do more and more tests on him, the Doctor had done something that would hurt him. Used the too-big needle to stab him and save him.

What if they used the gas on Cisco? What if they gassed both of them at the same time and saved Barry while they left Cisco to die? Would they do that?

He shuddered and looked at Barry, who was still watching him with concern. The older Asset sighed. “Well, if you did see something with Nimbus, I promise that he can’t hurt you. Nobody will hurt you ever again. And Nimbus is locked up, anyways.”

Cisco bit his lip as Barry’s phone vibrated. He pulled it out of his pocket and checked it before muttering something under his breath and jumping to his feet. “Eddie, hey!” A pause. “Sounds great. I’ll be right over.” Barry looked at Cisco apologetically. “I have to go, but I’ll be back soon.”

Cisco nodded and tucked up in on himself as Barry ran off, forgoing the elevator altogether. Now that Barry was gone, would they come down to test him? Maybe now the Supervisor would finally come down to give him an inspection or an evaluation. Cisco was surprised that it hadn’t already happened, but that just meant that they were probably building up to something big. Big and painful.

_ (“No more,” Cisco begged, tears streaming down his cheeks. “No more, please, no more, I can’t-I’ll do anything, please, no more!” _

_ Eiling looked at the orderlies who were standing around watching with cold distant eyes before shaking his head and looking back at Cisco, who was strapped down to a table. “Make the next cut.” _

_ Cisco choked back a scream as more pain shot through his body. “Please, please, please, please, stop stop stop stop no no nononononononononono please please please…” _

_ Nobody listened.) _

Cisco leaned back against the wall of the cell and curled up, closing his eyes. He had to rest. Not sleep, sleep wasn’t allowed, but rest.

* * *

 

Caitlin cupped her hands around her mouth. “Barry? Barry?”

“He’s here,” Hartley muttered, looking around the abandoned building. He wrinkled his nose when he saw the large assortment of beer bottles before spotting a gloved hand sticking out from a fallen shelf. “Caitlin, over there!”

The two picked their way carefully over to the fallen shelf, moving as fast as they could without accidentally cutting themselves on broken glass or tripping over a fallen object. Caitlin gasped and knelt down beside the fallen cabinet, ignoring the gravel that dug into her knee. “Barry! Barry, say something so we know that you’re okay.”

She tugged experimentally on his arm as Hartley laboured to lift the cabinet. Barry squirmed and slid partially out from underneath the shelf. “Ow.”

“Get him out of there,” Hartley grimaced. He wasn’t exactly incredibly strong, and that cabinet was  _ heavy. _ Caitlin nodded and tugged Barry the rest of the way out, wincing at his small sounds of pain. Hartley let the cabinet drop as soon as Barry was clear, reaching down to haul him to his feet.

Caitlin stood up as well and slung Barry’s arm over her shoulders. Hartley followed her lead and did the same thing with his other arm, letting the speedster put most of his weight on them instead of on his legs. “I told you not to do this, Allen,” Hartley muttered. “But did you listen?”

Caitlin gave Hartley a look and sighed. “Come on. Let’s get him to the van.”

* * *

Cisco made a small sound of discomfort as he woke up from the best sleep that he had had in ages, one that was thankfully absent of any nightmares. As he yawned and slowly uncurled from his position, Cisco realized that he had made a fatal mistake. He had fallen asleep without permission.  _ Again. _

Now they would know that he was a bad Asset. One time was punishable but forgivable. After that… After that they would realize that he was useless. The Supervisor would realize that he was untrained and he would Order the Handler to retrain him, to reshow him what would happen if he broke the Rules. Please, Cisco knew what would happen if he broke the Rules.

“Hey, you’re awake.” Cisco jumped and whipped around, looking for the person who had spoken. He tried not to listen for heartbeats when he first woke up, because if he did then he would inevitably hear all sorts of other things. (The dampeners were far from perfect.)

Handler Rathaway was standing outside the cell, a tray of food balanced in his hand. Cisco frowned at it even as he curled back against the wall and waited for a blow. Why did these people want him to eat?

“It’s time for dinner,” Handler Rathaway said, walking right into the open cell door and crouching down to set the tray of food in front of Cisco. Then he backed out and promptly sat down on the floor. Maybe he wanted to see what Cisco would do? See whether he understood that he had been bad? See if he knew that he wasn’t allowed to eat without permission?

After the silence stretched out longer and nobody moved, Handler Rathaway sighed.

“Go ahead. Eat,” he Ordered. Cisco shook his head, and Handler Rathaway frowned. “Why not?”

“I-I slept without permission, Handler Rathaway Sir,” Cisco said honestly.

“No, Caitlin gave you permission to sleep, remember?” Handler Rathaway reminded him. “She said that you could sleep whenever you wanted.”

Cisco trembled. “But-but she…”

“You can sleep,” Handler Rathaway assured him. “You can sleep and you can eat and you don’t need our permission to do any of those things, alright? If you feel like doing something, as long as you aren’t hurting anyone, you don’t need our permission. Okay?”

The teen tried to shake his head. No no no this was all wrong, all wrong and backwards and bad and not at all right. “No-”

“Eat,” Handler Rathaway interrupted. And that was an Order. That was something that Cisco knew he  _ had  _ to do. He had to eat or else they would force him they would get the tube and then they would force him to eat even while he begged and pleaded for them to stop.

Cisco snatched the sandwich off of the plate and shoved it into his mouth to show that he was eating, trying to fit all of it inside of his mouth at once. The Handler shook his head and sighed as Cisco tried to eat twice as fast. Because surely Handler Rathaway was upset that he wasn’t eating fast enough and wasn’t doing well enough. Wasn’t being a good Asset.

He was sorry, he was so so sorry. Cisco would try to do better. He would try to do better for them next time. Promise promise promise.

“Don’t eat so fast,” Handler Rathaway advised. “The food isn’t going anywhere, you know. We’re just worried because you’re so skinny. Caitlin wants to put you in a wheelchair.”

No, no, please don’t, he would do better. Cisco would be better. He wouldn’t be skewed, he would be perfect, the perfect Asset. He would he would he would please don’t punish him for being so terrible he was sorry. He was so so so sorry.

The intercom beeped and Cisco flinched, so sure that it would be the Doctor or the Supervisor telling Handler Rathaway to carry out punishment. But while it  _ was _ Doctor Caitlin over the intercom, instead of saying anything about punishment, she spoke up in a panic.

“Barry found Tony, he’s going after him at the school that he used to go to with Iris,” the Doctor said. Cisco froze. That meant that they had found the Asset that they were looking for. That meant that now they would hurt someone else, that meant that now they were going to have even more people to test against Cisco and make him fight with.

But it also meant that Barry might get hurt. Assets were strong and dangerous sometimes. Like… Like Bette had been. So beautiful and strong and dangerous. But they had still caught her and killed her and-and-and-

What if that meant that they wouldn’t have any use for Cisco anymore? Barry had already told him that he didn’t need to be useful. What if that meant that once they had a new Asset, they wouldn’t have any reason to keep Cisco alive? What if that meant that they would kill him? Eiling had always said that if Cisco died in captivity, he would continue doing experiments on his corpse. Would the people here do that too?

Handler Rathaway jumped to his feet and Cisco cringed away. Now they would hurt him now they would punish him, please, he didn’t want to die anymore-

“I’ll be back soon, okay?” The Handler said. “And when I do, you’re not in trouble. I just have to see what ridiculous situation Allen has gotten himself into this time.”

Allen. Was that like Carlos? The other name for Barry? Strange.

As soon as Handler Rathaway was out of sight, Cisco grabbed the juicebox that had been given to him along with the sandwich and hid it underneath the blanket along with the other food and the socks. He would save it for later.

Cisco blinked at the door to the cell. Handler Rathaway had left it wide open, allowing him to… To escape. If Cisco wanted to, he could leave the cell. And last time that that had happened, they had  _ wanted  _ him to move. To not sit still. Which meant that maybe…

Oh! Maybe they wanted to see if he understood that he would be expected to go to the room where they would do the tests and carry out punishments! Maybe they wanted to know that Cisco knew exactly when he deserved punishment! And he did, he did, he knew he did. Not only had he slept without permission, but he had also been bad and hadn’t eaten the food when Handler Rathaway had given it to him.

Cisco slowly got to his feet. He would show them. He would show them that he knew that he had been a bad Asset.

Slowly walking to the elevator, Cisco pushed the button that Handler Rathaway had when he had taken Cisco up to the bad scary medical room where Doctor Caitlin had looked at him and for some reason hadn’t hurt him.

As the elevator carried him up, Cisco slumped against the wall and fought back his fear. He knew that he was inviting punishment; that was the whole point. Cisco was showing them that he understood what he deserved. What they would do to him. That he had completely accepted the fact that he was beneath them and only deserved pain and fear.

As soon as the elevator stopped, Cisco just followed his ears.

Handler Rathaway and Doctor Caitlin were sitting in front of the same white table that Cisco had seen before, both in visions and in person. While Doctor Caitlin was watching one of the monitors that contained data on Barry’s vitals (Cisco remembered Handler Rathaway and the Supervisor looking at that screen too in his vision, when they had poisoned Barry), Handler Rathaway had caught Cisco’s entrance.

He nudged the Doctor lightly with his elbow and she turned around, mouth opening. “Hartley, what-” She stopped and looked at Cisco. “What are you doing up here?”

Cisco froze. Maybe they hadn’t wanted him to come up after all. Maybe they had wanted him to stay downstairs and take his punishment down there. But because he hadn’t they would punish him so painfully and severely that he would beg for death. The same way that he had done at Eiling’s hands so many times before.

_ (Cisco whimpered in pain as he tried to stand, only for a crippling blow to be delivered to his leg, making it crumple out from underneath him. A white hot needle of pain shot through his body and Cisco let out a yelp as he managed to bite back the scream that wanted to come out. The boy looked up at Eiling from his place on the cement floor. _

_ The general shook his head slowly, clicking his tongue and waving the heavy metal crowbar that he had Ordered Cisco to use his powers on. “You know that you deserve it, Asset 005.” _

_ Cisco nodded and looked at the floor. “I know.” _

_ Another strike, this one to his shoulder, causing it to dislocate. Cisco gasped and squeezed his eyes shut as his hand automatically jerked up to touch the injured limb. _

_ “How do I know that?” Eiling asked, his voice flat and hard. “How do I know that you know?” _

_ “I deserve it,” Cisco whispered, tears tracing down his cheeks. “I deserve all of my punishment. I wasn’t perfect. I didn’t do anything good enough. I wasn’t a perfect Asset. I deserve everything that you do to me, Sir. I deserve all of it.” _

_ “Yes. You do.” There was another blow, this one making harsh contact with Cisco’s ribs. “Good boy. Now keep your mouth shut. I’m not through with you yet.” _

_ Cisco forced himself to stay silent as Eiling brought the crowbar down again.) _

“I-I wanted to make sure that you kn-knew I u-understood,” Cisco stammered, trying to hold back tears at the thought of what they would do to him, “th-that you would want to-to punish me up-up here an-and not in the c-cell.”

“Punish you?” Doctor Caitlin asked, slowly standing up from her chair. “For what?”

Cisco shrugged. “E-everything. F-for being Disobedient and bad and a failure and an imperfect Asset and a stupid little brat who doesn’t know when to keep his mouth shut and doesn’t follow Orders like he should even though he knows what will happen if he doesn’t, doesn’t he?” Cisco’s voice started to unconsciously mimic Eilings. “For not being good enough and not being fast enough and moving and eating and drinking without permission because I should know better than that by now-”

“No!” Doctor Caitlin interrupted, and Cisco skittered back fearfully, cowering away from her. She lowered her voice some. “No, no, none of that is worth being punished. You don’t deserve to be punished at all. I’m glad that you came up, Carlos, I really am, but you don’t deserve to be punished.”

That wasn’t true he did he did he always always did-

A loud beeping from one of the monitors, the one that held all of the data on Barry’s medical status, made Cisco clap his hands over his ears. The Doctor and the Handler spun around to look at the screen as it flashed with colors and words that passed by too fast for Cisco to read. The Handler and the Doctor seemed to understand it, however, since Handler Rathaway swore in a language that Cisco didn’t recognize and Doctor Caitlin gripped the edge of the table with a small sound of worry.

Maybe Barry’s fight wasn’t going as well as it should have been? Maybe he was hurt or worse? What if he was dead, what if the new Asset had killed him, what if Barry was dead dead dead-

Cisco backed up until he hit the wall and froze as he waited for someone to come to scold him and then punish him for being bad and Disobedient. Just because Doctor Caitlin and Handler Rathaway were currently focused on what was happening to Barry didn’t mean that they wouldn’t punish him. It didn’t mean that they didn’t know that Cisco was doing bad wrong Disobedient things.

“He’s injured,” Doctor Caitlin whispered. 

“Come on, Barry, grab Iris and get out of there,” Handler Rathaway advised the screen. Cisco wondered if Barry could hear them. There had to be some way that they could control their Asset from the red suit that they let him wear, right? There was another sound and Handler Rathaway leaned back into his chair. “Finally.”

A bright red dot on one of the other screens flickered and sped along what looked like it might have been a road map for a little ways before stopping. Doctor Caitlin leaned forward even more in her chair until Cisco wondered if she was going to fall off of it onto the floor. “Why did he stop?”

Handler Rathaway shrugged and studied the screen. “I don’t know. He’s miles away from the school-” Suddenly, he sat bolt upright, eyes wide and glasses suddenly askew. The Handler straightened them on his face before he continued. “He’s 5.3 miles away, Caitlin.”

Doctor Caitlin’s eyes stretched wide. “Is he going to…?”

Cisco wondered what was going to happen. Was 5.3 miles some sort of point where Barry would be able to escape? Where he would be able to find the Supervisor? Cisco didn’t know. But he hoped not; if Barry was lucky, he would be able to escape for a short amount of time, but the Handlers and the Supervisor would find him again. They always did. Cisco and Bette had learned that lesson the hard way.

“No way,” Handler Rathaway said, practically bouncing up and down in his seat. The man looked positively gleeful. That couldn’t have been good. Sometimes Handlers were at their happiest when they were inflicting punishment on their Assets. “He’s gonna do it!”

The red dot on the screen that was labelled with Barry’s name suddenly accelerated, and Cisco watched as the Doctor reacted in horror while Handler Rathaway actually jumped out of his seat and practically pressed his nose against the screen.

Inside of him, Cisco felt something expand and then burst like a bubble. He jumped and looked around-he recognized that feeling, however vaguely, as being associated with his powers. Whatever it was, it made Handler Rathaway punch the air victoriously before blushing bright red and sitting back down in his chair, practically yanking his own glasses off of his face to frantically clean them as he avoided making any eye contact whatsoever with Doctor Caitlin.

“He did it,” Doctor Caitlin said, staring at the screen with amazement. “He actually did it. And he didn’t die.”

“Of course he didn’t die,” Handler Rathaway sniffed. He looked incredibly proud of himself. “I ran the simulation over a hundred times.”

“Barry died in half of those,” Doctor Caitlin pointed out.

Handler Rathaway flushed even darker. “That doesn’t matter. What matters is that when it was real life, he managed to do it.”

The Doctor sighed and shook her head as Barry sped into the room in a blur of yellow lightning and motion. Cisco jumped, curling against the wall where he would be relatively safe.

“Tony’s in the Pipeline, and I took Iris to the hospital,” he announced, “and I’m almost positive that my hand is broken. Ow. Ow. Ow.”

Doctor Caitlin stood up and walked him over to the bed where Cisco had seen her put Barry in his vision-twice. “Take off your suit. If you can, anyways.”

Cisco watched them with wide eyes, shaking. They were going to punish Barry now they were going to test him they were going to hurt Cisco test them both hurt their new Asset he didn’t want to be here he wanted Bette he wanted-he wanted-

Cisco tried to take deep breaths. Whenever he had gotten like this before, Eiling had always yelled at him to keep quiet. That he was being a distraction. That he was imperfect flawed worthy of punishment not a good boy a bad Asset somebody who needed to be punished because he was skewed and wrong and nothing more than an imperfect and Disobedient Asset. So he had to calm down. He had to stop. He had to he had to he had to he had to-

“Hey,” Barry said, noticing Cisco’s distress. “Are you okay?”

He tried to get up from the bed, only for the Doctor to push him back down onto it again with a small reprimanding sound. “Don’t move.”

The tall Asset shook his head. “He’s panicking, Caitlin, look.”

As the Doctor turned around to look at him, Cisco tried to act like he was okay. If he was okay, all they would do was punish him. They wouldn’t test him or tell him that he wasn’t good enough. They wouldn’t hurt Barry even more because he had failed if they were distracted by Cisco.

Cisco tried taking several deep breaths. Bette had caught him to count, to take deep breaths for certain amounts of time and then let them out for another amount that was longer. She taught him how to ground himself, how to bring himself out of the attack. That way they wouldn’t be in one (and it was a  _ they,  _ because Bette got them too) when Eiling came down to bring them to their next test or punishment. Or whoever else was Handling them that day.

Barry flailed the hand that Doctor Caitlin wasn’t checking over wildly in Handler Rathaway’s direction. “Hartey, can you bring me my phone? I want to call Joe.”

Handler Rathaway sighed and stood up, walking over to what looked like a pile of Barry’s clothes that had been haphazardly tossed onto the floor. He pulled a phone out of it and handed it over to Barry, who grabbed it with his good hand.

Halfway across Central City, Joe’s phone rang. Holding up a hand to pause Iris’s story of just how she had injured her hand (which still had yet to be x-rayed and was possibly broken) he looked at the contact name and answered it. “Barry?”

Iris watched as the expression on her dad’s face changed from confusion to concern.

“Are you sure you need me?” He asked. There was a pause. “Alright. Bye, Bar.”

“What’s wrong?” Iris asked.

Joe sighed and decided to tell her a half-truth. “I’m working on an abuse case. A bad one, probably the worst I’ve ever seen. The kid’s panicking, and I might be the only one who can calm him down, since nobody else seems to know what they’re doing. I don’t want to leave you, but-”

“Go,” Iris interrupted him. “I’ll be fine here.”

“Are you sure?” Joe asked.

Iris smiled at him. “Positive.”

Her father stood up and gave her a small kiss on the cheek. “I might not be back for a while, baby, but once I am I promise that I’ll listen to the whole story of what happened. No interruptions.”

* * *

Cisco curled up in on himself in the corner, knees up to his chest and hands over his ears. His eyes were wide, scanning everything for signs that it would hurt him. There were tools that could hurt him, there were people who could hurt him. And he knew that they would. Of course they would; he was being Disobedient right in front of them. He was being bad, so so so so bad.

Handler Rathaway stepped forward as if he were going to approach Cisco, and the boy tried to press himself even harder against the wall. Please please please he was sorry he couldn’t breathe he couldn’t breathe-

Cisco’s powers reached down through the floor, hooking and latching onto the machinery that he could feel around him. It was so tempting to hold onto it and use it to anchor himself, but that wasn’t allowed. And it would probably break the machine, too. If he did that, it would just make everything so much worse for him. Then they would have even more reason to punish him.

The teenager was so focused on trying to find something that he could ground himself with that he didn’t even notice when somebody else walked into the room. Or at least, he didn’t notice until Joe knelt down in front of him with a small wince.

“Hey,” Joe said softly, and Cisco tried to burrow himself into the wall in a weak attempt to get farther away from the man. Joe shifted to one side to show Cisco that there was a perfectly valid escape route right next to him if Cisco felt like he needed to take it. “Hey, it’s alright, son. Can you take a deep breath for me?”

Cisco shook his head frantically. “I can’t,” he gasped, “I’m sorry I can’t I can’t I can’t breathe I’m so sorry Sir I can’t breathe-”

“Yes you can,” Joe assured him. “You’re breathing right now. You just need to take more deep breaths, okay? Can you do that for me?”

Cisco struggled to Obey, mind focusing solely on the Order. He had to listen he had to listen he had to listen and Obey or else they would hurt him-

“Not like that,” Joe corrected him. “You’re making it worse. Take a deep breath. With me, okay? In and out, in and out.”

Cisco tried to copy his motions, entire body shaking. As soon as his breathing had levelled out some, Joe nodded. “Feel any better?”

Cisco started to tremble again. Was that an Order was that a question he didn’t know he didn’t know he didn’t know. The seventeen-year-old nodded quickly and ducked his head down before moving his hands behind his back. Submissive position. Surely Joe and the Handler and Barry and Doctor Caitlin would recognize it.

“Alright, son, do you want to go outside?” Joe asked. “Get some fresh air?”

Chewing his lower lip, Cisco nodded hesitantly. “Wh-wh-what would I have to do in r-return?”

Joe thought for a moment, and Cisco knew that he was thinking of something big enough. Something that would be a suitable exchange for something like going outside. (It had been so long, too long, since he had been outside. He would spend every moment out there if possible.) Something outside of just wearing a hood or a collar while he was outside.

“You have to tell me one thing about the place that you were at before,” Joe Ordered. Cisco blinked a few times. That was all? That was the only thing that Joe wanted to know? About Eiling and about his facility?

Cisco rubbed his shoulders and shuddered. “There was-there was a Pit.”

“A pit?” Joe asked gently, pushing for more information.

Cisco nodded. “For-for when I was bad. When I Disobeyed Orders.” He started to shake even harder, breath becoming ragged as he began panicking again. “Whenever I didn’t do well enough or wasn’t good enough. But I deserved it every time, I deserved it I deserved it I deserved it I always always always deserved it, I know that I did.”

“No,” Joe said firmly. “You didn’t deserve that. You didn’t deserve any of it.”

This was a test. This had to be a test. Which meant that Cisco had to answer properly or else Joe would get mad and punish him for more than just letting himself panic. “Yes, Sir, yes I did. I know I deserved it. I know that I deserved it, and I promise that I won’t forget.”

_ (“Be glad that I’m the one testing you, Asset 005,” Eiling said with a scowl. “Somebody else would have killed you the first time that you failed. Consider yourself lucky.” _

_ “Thank you, Sir,” Cisco gasped out weakly. “Thank you so much.” _

_ Eiling crouched down in front of him and Cisco cringed back with a whimper as the man reached out toward him. But instead of hitting him, the general just patted his head firmly. “That’s more like it.”) _

Joe sighed and looked at Handler Rathaway and Doctor Caitlin, who both shrugged in unison. Cisco whimpered. No, no, no, what if he had answered wrong? What if he had failed their test and now he would be punished even worse and they would throw him in the Pit and they would cut him open and leave him alone in the dark so that he would think about what he had done or they would play loud noises that they didn’t seem to hear until he was clawing at his ears and begging them to stop.

At his small sound, Joe looked back at him and sighed. “You did good, son. You did very well. Now do you want to go outside?”

Cisco nodded eagerly but still hesitantly. He tugged his thin shirt down toward his legs and tattered pants, fingers bunching in the fabric as he tried to stay grounded and present in the situation at hand instead of losing himself into the past because of his fear. “Y-yes Sir.”

“You don’t have to call me ‘Sir’,” Joe said softly as he stood up. “You can call me Joe if you want to.”

Cisco bobbed his head quickly as he stood up as fast as he could in an attempt to show Joe that he wasn’t weak, that he wasn’t useless, that he could still walk and be a good and useful Asset for him. “I understand Sir.”

Joe sighed and started to lead him out of the room. “Come on, kiddo.”

That meant that he had to be silent. That meant that he had to be quiet and he had to stay silent just like Joe wanted him to or else he would be punished. Or else he would be beaten. Doctor Caitlin had all of her  _ (bad scary no stop please please I’ll be a good boy please I promise I promise I promise please)  _ tools, Handler Rathaway had whips and his belt and his fists, and the Supervisor was a  _ Supervisor. _

As he led the boy down the hallway, Joe inspected him out of the corner of his eye.

Clearly, he had been abused severely. But they still didn’t know who had done it. And Hartley had said that the kid had known Bette; maybe they had been held captive in the same place? But as much of a monster as General Eiling seemed to be due to what Barry had told him, Joe still didn’t think that any army official would be that cruel to a child.

Seven or eight years. How old had the kid been when he was captured? Five?  _ Four?  _ Had he grown up in an environment where he was beaten and put in a pit and even vivisected for every one of his wrongdoings? God, it was no wonder that the poor kid was so terrified.

A thought occurred to Joe, making his blood run cold.

What if it hadn’t been this child? (He had said, after all, that he was taken for his powers) What if it had been another boy probably only a little bit younger than this one, begging people to believe him? Barry had run away enough times before, sometimes not found for days at a time. Anybody could have taken him and Joe wouldn’t have known. Or even Iris, given powers in his imagination, being lured away to disappear into the night?

Somebody had lost their child to a still-faceless monster. And Joe would be damned if he let this kid get hurt again.

As he pushed open one of the many doors leading out of STAR Labs, Joe looked over at the kid-Carlos, they had decided on calling him. He was staring at the cloudy night sky with wide eyes, already shivering through the thin fabric of his shirt. It  _ was _ fall, after all, almost officially winter and the boy was severely underdressed. But he didn’t seem to mind very much.

Taking a few deep breaths of cold air, Cisco tried to stop himself from shivering. That was weakness. And weakness was not tolerated. Assets were not allowed to show weakness or else they would be punished.

Which meant that Cisco  _ would _ be punished. Cisco had already shown weakness to Handler Rathaway, Doctor Caitlin, Barry, the Supervisor and now Joe. So they would punish him. It was as simple as that.

Cisco shifted from foot to foot and took as many deep breaths as he could. Cold clean fresh air. Not stuffy and false and pumped in through pipes that could be turned off at any second.

_ (Cisco grasped at his chest and at his throat, trying to suck in the air that simply wasn’t coming.) _

No. No, he shouldn’t think about that. If he thought about that then he would panic again, and then Joe would be angry and Cisco would get punished for it. That was the way that it always was.

As Cisco started to shiver again, Joe sighed and slowly reached out toward him. “I’m going to put my hand on your shoulder now, okay? Nothing more. I won’t hurt you. I’m just going to put my hand down.”

Cisco froze as Joe did as he had said that he would, hand resting on his shoulder close to his neck. He knew that now Joe would reach for his throat and strangle him or use his larger size and greater strength to pin Cisco to the ground and beat him bloody-

_ (Cisco spat out blood, shaking and trembling in the freezing cold darkness. Blood dripped down the side of the metal table that he was strapped down to and congealed on the tools that had been used to slice him open. But there was no pain at that moment that he wasn’t used to. No screaming and no too-loud noises and no Orders. _

_ Just harsh cold silence and the steady dripping of the cooling blood. _

_ A blessing.) _

But Joe didn’t do any of those things. He just winced at the way that he could feel all of Cisco’s bones underneath his hand and gently tugged toward the door back into STAR Labs. “Come on, it’s too cold to stay out here for too long.”

Cisco nodded and lowered his gaze down to the floor. Where they wouldn’t be able to think that his eye contact was a sign of rebellion instead of one of submission. So that Joe would see that he wasn’t going to be a bad and Disobedient Asset. Not anymore. He would have control, he would be good, he would show the Handlers and the Doctors and the Supervisor and Joe that he knew how to behave properly.

Barry was waiting for them just inside the door, holding something dark in his hand. Cisco wondered if that was the hood that he was supposed to have been wearing when they brought him outside. Maybe because Joe had forgotten Handler Rathaway or Doctor Caitlin had told the Supervisor, who had sent Barry out to get Joe and bring him the hood that Cisco was supposed to wear.

But instead of handing it off to Joe, Barry held the dark fabric object out to Cisco instead. “Here. Your shirt is too thin. Caitlin wants you to wear this.”

Looking at Joe for permission and reaching out hesitantly at the nod he was given, Cisco took the offered bundle.

It was made out of soft navy fabric with white letters on it that Cisco read carefully. STAR Labs. Ah! So  _ this _ was how they were going to claim him as theirs. Not with a brand but with an object. Cisco was pretty sure that he preferred that to a brand, anyways. Much less painful.

_ (Pain seared through his entire body, originating from his shoulder. Cisco writhed and screamed as it shot through him, growing worse and worse with each passing second.) _

And that explained why the Handlers and the Supervisor made Barry wear the red sit, too. That was how they made sure that people knew that he belonged to them. That he was an Asset and not a real person. It all made so much more sense now!

He tugged the fabric over his head, expecting it to be far too tight and to have something attached at the top that they could use to discipline him. Instead, it was too big and  _ warm,  _ far warmer than Cisco had expected. There was even a hood that he could pull up over his head and little strings down the front that made it tighter or looser. That must have been what they would use to hurt him. Use them to grab him and strangle him. But he still had some level of control over it, and that was what mattered.

Tucking his arms out of the sleeves and wrapping them around his middle like he was hugging his own ribs, Cisco burrowed down into the soft fabric. It was certainly far nicer than anything that Eiling had ever given him.

“Do you like it?” Barry asked.

Cisco nodded quickly, eyes wide as he squeezed his own shoulders. “Thank you.”

“Come on, let’s get you back to your cell,” Joe said. There was a note of disapproval in his voice, and Cisco wondered what it was that he had done wrong. He was sorry, he was sorry, he wouldn’t ever do it again. Never never ever again. Not if it made Joe angry or made him think that something about Cisco was wrong and broken. Because then they would have to fix him. Cisco hated the fixing. It hurt and it made him feel all wrong and bad inside.

Barry sighed at Joe’s expression. “We’re working on it. Hartley’s gonna bring a cot down there later for Carlos to sleep on.”

Cisco blinked in confusion a few times. That didn’t make any sense. He knew what cots were; they were like beds, only smaller and you could move them around pretty easily. Why were they going to put one in his cell? Sleeping on anything other than the cold hard floor was not allowed for any reason. It was severely punishable.

Barry stepped forward and Joe took his hand off of Cisco’s shoulder, making the boy relax slightly. At least now the man would have to come after him in order to hurt him instead of already having an easy way to do it.

“C’mon,” the other Asset said softly. “You must be tired. Let’s go.”

* * *

Cisco looked at the cot inside of his cell. He tilted his head and looked at Barry in confusion. Cisco knew what a cot was, of course. But… But why was it here at all? Did they want him to use his powers and get a vision off of it?

Yes, yes, that had to be it. That had to be what they wanted him to do. Of course.

_ (“Touch it, freak, or I’ll  _ make _ you.”) _

Cisco rested his hands on top of the cot, digging his fingers into the thin blanket. For a moment he closed his eyes, regretfully trying to reach into it with his powers and access them. But nothing happened-there was no answering vision or even small ripple of energy moving out from underneath his skin. Not even a hint of blue.

He looked at Barry with wide eyes. Sorry sorry sorry he was sorry he hadn’t been good enough, he had tried, he had tried, please. Please, Barry was an Asset, Barry had to believe him, he had tried tried tried to use his powers and it  _ hadn’t worked,  _ please.

Barry frowned at him slightly. “Oh, hey, what’s wrong? What’s the matter?”

Cisco pointed to the bed. “S-sorry. I tried, I tried, I tried, I’m sorry.”

“Tried what?” Barry asked, tilting his head to one side. “The cot is for sleeping on. Hartley brought it down here. Didn’t even complain once.”

The cot… Was for sleeping on? Cisco blinked a few times and took a deep breath. “Do you-do you have a cot? In-in your cell?”

Barry’s eyes widened to the size of dinner plates. “No! I mean, yes, I have a bed, but it isn’t in a cell. It’s in my apartment.”

Cisco stared at him. Apartment? Barry-Barry didn’t have to sleep in a cell? But then where would they keep him if he was bad? Where would they trap him and use to let him heal when they had punished him? How did the Supervisor and the Handlers know that he wouldn’t just run off every time that they looked away if they weren’t keeping him inside of a cell like Cisco’s? 

Barry didn’t even have a collar! How were they supposed to control him when he wasn’t wearing the red suit? It just didn’t make any sense.

“Uh, I’m gonna go get Caitlin,” Barry decided. “She can help explain this to you better than I can.”

The Doctor the Doctor Barry was going to get the Doctor. Then she would open him up and shake her head because he was all wrong and bad inside and then she would take parts of him out and put other different parts back in and it would hurt so much, so so so much.

As Barry left, Cisco backed himself up into the corner as much as he could, slipping underneath the cot and flattening his body to the ground. Doctor Caitlin wouldn’t be able to hurt him if she couldn’t reach him, right? She wouldn’t be able to harm him if he was too well hidden for her to know where he was. (Nevermind the fact that if she crouched down Cisco would have been very clearly visible.)

He closed his eyes as he heard Barry returning, accompanied of course by Doctor Caitlin. She knelt down beside the cot but didn’t make any other moves to crawl underneath it and drag Cisco out. “Hey, Carlos, it’s okay. Can you come out? I want you to come out so that I can explain everything to you.”

That was an Order. She was Ordering him to come out from underneath the bed. Which meant that he had to Obey. Cisco always Obeyed Orders, and he had to make sure that the Doctor knew that he was a good Asset. So he had to come out from under the cot. Had to. Had to. Had to. Had to. It had been an Order. It had been an Order.

But-but he didn’t  _ want  _ to. It was safe underneath the bed, it was nice and safe and comforting and nobody could hurt him while he was hiding down here. Nobody.

“Carlos?” This time it was Barry’s voice who spoke up. “Can you please come out from under there? We just want to explain everything to you.”

“We won’t hurt you at all,” Doctor Caitlin promised. Lie lie lie lie it was a lie it was all a lie. She was just trying to trick him into coming out from underneath the cot so that she could hurt him. The Doctor sighed. “Come out now, Carlos.”

And that-that was a  _ real _ Order. Not one that anybody could have taken as a suggestion. Which meant that he had to come out. He had to come out. Squirming his way free from underneath the cot, Cisco braced his back up against it and pressed his back against the edge of the small portable bed.

Doctor Caitlin smiled at him. “There now, that’s better, isn’t it? Now we can see you and you can see us.”

Cisco shivered and tucked himself up small. He had Disobeyed her Orders the first time around and that meant that he would be punished, that they would be mad at him, that Doctor Caitlin would hurt him. Cisco pushed himself back, trying to squeeze between the edge of the cot and the place where it bumped against the wall.

The Doctor patted the side of the bed, making Cisco flinch. “This is for sleeping on. It won’t hurt you, and I won’t hurt you. It’s just for sleeping. That’s it. Why don’t you get on?”

That was an Order, and Cisco had already Disobeyed enough Orders that night. So he hopped up onto it, burrowing underneath the thin blanket that had been stretched over the top and pressing himself up against the wall where it was safer. Curling up and pulling his head back down into his shoulders, Cisco tried to protect his stomach and ribs.

Wait a minute. This couldn’t have been what they wanted him to do. They would want to tie him down to the bed, not have him curled up on it.

He unfolded his body and was on top of the blanket in two seconds, startling Doctor Caitlin, who had leaned over the cot to look at him. Pressing his wrists up against the top of the bed, Cisco tried to get his ankles as close to the bottom as physically possible. Which, considering the fact that he was shorter than the cot was long, was rather difficult.

Doctor Caitlin frowned down at him. “What are you doing?”

Cisco blinked at her before letting out a small whimper. What had he done wrong? What had he done incorrectly? What would they punish him for?

The Doctor looked at him, trying to figure out what he was doing before she accidentally made anything worse. Her eyes fell on the scars and chafed skin around his wrists and ankles, and she suddenly realized what he was waiting for her to do.

“I’m not going to tie you down,” Doctor Caitlin said firmly. “We don’t do that here. I won’t hurt you, and I won’t tie you down to the bed.”

Cisco whimpered again. What was going on? Why wasn’t she going to tie him down?

Oh. Right. He remembered now. The people here liked to pretend that what they were doing wasn’t bad and wrong and scary and painful, especially in front of Barry. They liked to pretend that they were doing good things. Legal things. Not Doctor-things and Handler-things and Supervisor-things. Which meant that he had to be the one to say that it was okay while Barry was there so that Barry would keep Obeying them.

“You can. You can,” Cisco repeated. “You can tie me down, you can. I won’t fight you, I’ll be a good boy, I promise.”

Doctor Caitlin sighed and looked at Barry for a moment before closing her eyes. “I’m not going to tie you down, Carlos. Okay? I won’t to that to you. The things that happened to you may have seemed like they were normal, but they weren’t, okay? They were wrong. So I won’t do any of that to you. Ever. Do you understand that?”

Cisco trembled. He didn’t understand he didn’t understand he didn’t understand-but it was an Order, that was something that he  _ had _ to understand even if he didn’t he didn’t he didn’t. “Yes Ma-I-I mean, yes Doctor-Doctor Caitlin.”

Doctor Caitlin took a deep breath. “I’m going to leave the lights on in here, alright? If you need something, you can leave the cell to get it, okay? You have my permission. You’re allowed.”

Cisco knew that that was really a trick, but he still gave her a miniscule nod so that she would understand that he knew it was a trick.

Barry rested his hand on the Doctor’s shoulder  _ (no no no didn't he see? Didn’t Barry see that that was a surefire way to get punished? Was he trying to draw attention onto himself so that Cisco wouldn’t be hurt the way that Cisco himself had done so many times before?)  _ and squeezed it lightly. “Come on, Caitlin, we gotta check up on Tony.”

Cisco closed his eyes tightly. He could hear them leaving, leaving him alone to heal for their next round of testing. He knew what they were doing. He understood that much, at least.

As he started to fall asleep, Cisco automatically curled up on himself to protect his internal organs from any attacks that would come in the night.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It's the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared.”--Lois Lowry

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings at the beginning for gore-it's in a nightmare, and all of it is italicized so you can skip it if you need to.
> 
> also this is a time skip of a few days since the end of the last chapter.

_ Cisco tried to turn his head, only for his neck to catch painfully on the collar around his neck. Biting his tongue, he looked around, struggling to stand up. Reaching down to touch the floor and then use it to haul himself to his feet, Cisco’s hand landed in a puddle of something slippery and wet. Blood. It was far from an unfamiliar feeling to have it start to congeal on his hands. _

_ “C-Cisco?” Someone coughed wetly from the darkness. Cisco jumped at the sound of his name. How did they know that? Who had told them? He had been a good boy, a very good boy, he hadn’t told anybody, he promised that he had been. “Is that… Is that you, Cisco?” _

_ Taking a deep breath, Cisco nodded. “It-it’s me.” _

_ Taking a step in the direction that the voice had come from, Cisco reached out blindly. His fingers made contact with giving flesh, and whoever it was that he was touching winced and tried to pull away. Cisco blinked and squinted his eyes as he tried to peer into the darkness. His eyes adjusted slowly, but once they did, Cisco couldn’t stop himself from letting out a small gasp of shock before closing his mouth and forcing himself into silence. _

_ Barry looked up at him from where he was chained to the wall and to the floor, blood dribbling out of the corner of his mouth. Cisco could see that his legs and arms were practically splintered, bones broken and bent and snapped. The older Asset’s eyes were glazed with pain. His cheekbones were sunken and his ribs practically poked through his flesh. “Help… Me.” _

_ Cisco closed his eyes and stumbled back. No, no, he knew what would happen to him if he tried to help Barry. He knew what they would do to him. Maybe they wouldn’t even punish  _ him; _ maybe they would take all of it out on Barry instead. To teach him a real lesson. To make him learn his place. _

_ “Please.” This time the voice was female, all-too-familiar, and coming from his other side. Cisco’s head snapped around and his eyes landed on Bette. Blood bubbled at her lips, trickling down from the corners of her eyes like tears. “Please,  _ Cordero,  _ please, help us. They hurt us. Please help us.” _

_ Cisco scrambled backwards as a door materialized on the wall, swinging open with a squeal of hinges. Eiling stepped through it, followed by the looming figures of Doctor Caitlin and Handler Rathaway. Doctor Caitlin was wielding a scalpel, while Handler Rathaway had a whip coiled at his side. Cisco whimpered softly as they marched past him to kneel down in front of Barry. _

_ Handler Rathaway’s mouth twisted into a sneer. “You should have known better, Asset,” he purred. “You’re too trusting. We’ll have to fix that.” _

_ The Doctor hummed in agreement and gently set the blade of her scalpel against Barry’s throat, teasing the very tip of the blade into the skin underneath his chin. Barry didn’t even make an effort to try to fight them. _

_ Eiling stomped over to Bette, heavy boots making loud sounds as they hit the floor. He reached down and grabbed a handful of her red hair, forcing her to look up at him despite her weak efforts not to. He smirked at her. “Come on, Sargent, don’t make this any more difficult than it has to be.” _

_ Bette didn’t say anything and stared up into Eiling’s face, eyes dull but still sparking with explosive power. Cisco made a small sound in the back of his throat, reaching out and almost touching his dead friend. This wasn’t real, this couldn’t have been real, Eiling didn’t have Barry and Bette was dead, Bette had been killed. This couldn’t have been real. There was no way that it was real. _

_ But… But if felt real. It felt real. It felt so so real… _

_ That was when Eiling turned to look at  _ him,  _ and Cisco was unable to stop himself from flinching back and cowering against the hard wall behind him. Eiling sneered and snapped his fingers before signalling to Handler Rathaway and Doctor Caitlin. The two stepped away from Barry’s limp body and advanced on Cisco, eyes narrowed. _

_ “Take Asset 005 away,” Eiling Ordered them, and Cisco tried to struggle as Handler Rathaway grabbed the back of his collar and hauled him up before passing him along to Doctor Caitlin. She smirked and ran the blade of her scalpel along the edges of Cisco’s lips. _

_ “Are you sure that you don’t want me to do something about the vocal cords?” She asked Eiling, smiling at Cisco’s horror. “It would stop it from screaming while I cut it open.” _

_ Eiling’s upper lip curled. “Of course you can. It should stop it from whining, too.” _

_ “No, no, no, please, I’ll be good, I’ll be good, I promise I will,” Cisco pleaded. “I know my place I’m a good Asset please-” _

_ The tip of the scalpel plunged down, but just before it could stab into Cisco’s flesh- _

His brown eyes snapped open, screams tearing themselves from his throat. Cisco jerked his hands up to his neck, running them back and forth and all around the place that vibrated when he spoke (he assumed that those were where his vocal cords were). All intact. All intact. Doctor Caitlin hadn’t done anything to them.

…Yet.

What if-what if he had seen the future? At least mixed with his dream, because Bette was dead dead dead and she wasn’t coming back. What if he had seen one of many Possibilities, one of many possible futures that might have been? What if they really would do all of those things, collar him and break Barry’s bones and then-and then-and then-

Despite the newly-made dampeners in his ears, Cisco still heard the sound of footsteps running toward him. A Handler, a Doctor, maybe even a Supervisor. They would punish him for being bad, for falling asleep without any permission, for screaming, for doing everything that Cisco knew he wasn’t allowed to do. They would whip him and they would break him and they would chain him and muzzle him and beat him until he was spitting out blood and then leave him alone in the Pit for days.

“Carlos? Carlos, are you okay? I saw that you were having a nightmare on the security cameras,” Doctor Caitlin’s voice said. No no no no she would cut out his vocal cords she would hurt Barry she would hurt  _ Bette _ no no no no he couldn’t let her do that. Cisco had to protect them. Cisco had to keep them Safe. Assets looked out for each other. Always.

Doctor Caitlin knelt down beside the cot and looked at him with what might have been concern if he was anything other than an Asset. “Are you alright? It was just a dream.”

She reached out and touched his arm and  _ no no he knew what she was going to do he knew he was smart and a good loyal Asset and he knew he knew he  _ **_knew-_ **

Cisco threw himself away, tumbling off of the cot before scrambling down to hide underneath it in the blink of an eye. His head banged against the floor first (when he had fallen off) and the bottom of the cot second, and Cisco pressed his hands against the injured spot with a small sound of pain and fear.

The Doctor hopped down onto the floor to crouch down and peer underneath the bed. “Hey, it’s okay. I won’t hurt you. Are you alright?”

Cisco whimpered. No no no no no no no he had failed he had failed he was a failure he was a failure he had done everything wrong and he didn’t deserve to live as anything other than an Asset and now Doctor Caitlin would hurt him she would hurt him she would hurt him so much-

_ (Cisco went limp in Eiling’s grasp, not even bothering to fight him anymore. He knew what the man would do to him for fighting. He knew that it wasn’t allowed. _

_ Eiling shook him harshly, making Cisco’s head roll to one side. “Come on, Asset 005. It’s time for your next test.” _

_ The part of Cisco’s brain that was still somewhat aware of the situation at hand sparked with panic, sending fear flooding through the boy’s body. Cisco started shaking, small whimpers making their way to Eiling’s ears. The general scowled angrily. _

_ “Not this again. You aren’t allowed to do this, Asset 005. Is that understood?” _

_ Cisco tried to take a deep breath to calm himself down and failed miserably. “Yes-yes-yes-yes S-Sir.” _

_ Eiling curled his lip up and nodded. “Good. Now come on. I’m sure that you don’t need a reminder of what happened last time that you disobeyed one of my orders.” _

_ Cisco nodded quickly, the sound of breaking bones still fresh in his mind. “N-no, Sir, I don’t. I understand.”) _

“I won’t hurt you, I promise,” Doctor Caitlin vowed, sitting down on the floor. “I just want to make sure that you’re okay. I saw you hit your head."

Cisco trembled and tucked up in on himself. “I’m sorry Ma’am, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to damage myself without your Orders. I know that I was bad.”

“Damage yourself without my orders?” The Doctor asked with a frown, mind racing as she tried to figure out what he meant. Her eyes landed on one of the scars poking out from his tattered sleeve, and she suddenly realized why some of the old injuries had looked so shaky while others looked so clinical. “Oh, god, oh no, we wouldn’t-I promise, I won’t ever order you to do that to yourself. I promise, I won’t.”

Lie lie trick that was a lie. Always a lie. Everything not-bad was either a lie, a trick, or a test.

“Here,” Doctor Caitlin said, pulling the blanket that Cisco had been using to hide all of his food and the socks out of the corner and draping it over his shoulders rather awkwardly after flattening herself down onto her stomach and sticking her hands underneath the bed. She paused and looked at the suddenly revealed food in confusion.

No, no, no, she’d found his stash, she’d found the food that he had been saving for himself and for Barry, she’d found it, that was bad bad bad bad. Now she was going to punish him more because he had broken so so so so many Rules.

“You haven’t been eating the food we’ve been giving you?” Doctor Caitlin asked with a frown, looking at Cisco. “You’ve just been saving it? You need to eat more, you’re too skinny. You’re starving yourself.”   


He trembled and curled up on himself, eyes wide and frightened. He-he hadn’t meant to make her mad, he was sorry, he was sorry, he was so so so very sorry. He hadn’t meant to make her mad.

“Are you hungry right now?” The Doctor asked, and Cisco tensed.

What was he supposed to say to that? If he lied and said no, she might get mad at him for lying. If he told the truth and said yes, she would say that he should have eaten and then take away the food and leave him there alone in the cell with nothing at all. Trap trap trap trap.

“N-no Ma’am,” he whispered finally. That was safer than telling the truth. At least now she would be quick with her punishment instead of drawing it out.

“Well, could you still eat something? Even though you say that you aren’t hungry?” She asked softly. “Barry was just out getting coffee and he brought some food back with him. You slept all night this time, even if you did have a nightmare. I could call Barry right now and ask him to run back out and grab something for you to eat if you don’t want any of the other things that he brought back. Like a scone or a croissant.”

Cisco blinked a few times. He didn’t know what a scone or a croissant was, but they didn’t sound scary. Or at least ‘scone’ didn’t. And… And the Doctor  _ wanted  _ him to eat? She didn’t want him to starve even though he had been so bad, so bad, so so so so bad?

But if the Doctor wanted him to eat, that meant that he had to. If Doctor Caitlin wanted him to eat something, then he would eat.

“I-I’ll do whatever you want me to do, Ma’am,” Cisco said nervously, looking at the floor and curling up on himself slightly. “Anything you want me to.”

“It’s okay,” Doctor Caitlin said sympathetically, and reached out with her palm up as if she wanted him to take it. When he kept looking at it in confusion and apprehension, she sighed and smiled at him in a way that might have been gentle if she had been anybody else but a Doctor. “You can take my hand, I just want to lead you upstairs.”

An Order. She was giving him an Order, if he Obeyed maybe she wouldn’t poison his food (if she really was going to give him anything to eat). Cisco slowly reached out and took it, flinching and waiting for her to strike at him and throw him on the ground and yell at him that he was a freak, that he should have known better, that he was stupid and a failure and didn’t have a purpose-

Cisco’s skin brushed against Doctor Caitlin’s and his world turned blue.

_ “Where’s Ronnie?” The Doctor’s voice demanded, and Cisco automatically flinched. Everything was dark blue and black, flickering in and out of focus. “Hartley, where is he?!” _

_ “He’s still inside,” Cisco heard Handler Rathaway’s voice say. He covered his ears and tried to squeeze his eyes shut, whimpering quietly and wishing that all of it would just  _ end. 

_ “What?! Open the door!” _

_ “Caitlin, I can’t, we’re in lockdown mode,” Handler Rathaway’s voice sounded… Different. Horrified. Regretful. Not like how any Handler had ever sounded before. _

_ “Hartley,” Doctor Caitlin said, voice wavering, “we have to get him out of there or he’ll  _ die.”

_ The loud beeping sound in the background of the vision that Cisco hadn’t even noticed seemed to grow even louder, making him let out a small squeaking sound of pain. _

_ “Hartley? Hartley, can you hear me?” A  _ new  _ voice, a Handler or a Doctor or  _ somebody  _ said, voice muffled and slightly static-y. Cisco trembled. He wanted to get out of this vision he wanted to get out of this vision he wanted to get out of this vision. _

_ “Ronnie!” Doctor Caitlin shouted. “It’s me!” _

_ “Caitlin,” the new voice said, and that was an Asset-voice, scared and uncertain and not at all like a Handler. Was this an execution? Had this Asset finally ceased to be useful and now it was being gotten rid of? “Is Hartley there?” _

_ “I’m here, I’m listening, Ronnie”-(was that even his real name? Just like how Carlos wasn’t really Cisco’s name?)-“I’m still here.” Handler Rathaway still didn’t sound like a Handler, even if it was clearly his voice. “What do you want me to do?” _

_ “I adjusted the magnets to redirect the beam,” the Asset-‘Ronnie’-voice said. “To try and vent the systems so the blast goes up and not out.” _

_ “I’ll need to reset the particle parameters to compensate,” Handler Rathaway’s voice warned. For a moment the world faded out like everything was muted, and Cisco hoped that he would be pushed out of the vision. _

_ “I’m here.” Cisco started at the sound of Doctor Caitlin’s voice. _

_ “Caitlin, whatever happens-” ‘Ronnie’s’ voice was suddenly cut off by a low roar and Cisco felt instead of heard the way that it hummed throughout his entire body. _

_ “Ronnie!” Doctor Caitlin shouted, and Cisco flinched at the grief and fear in her voice.  _ “Ronnie!  _ No, no, Ronnie, I love you, Ronnie, I need you, please, Ronnie-!” _

_ The Doctor’s voice was cut off by a sob, and Cisco couldn’t help but stare at her blurry outline in the vision. The world tunnelled, the blue and the black mixing together with gray that was swirled through with the colors of the walls of his cell, and Cisco was pushed out of the vision just as suddenly as he had been forced to enter it. _

Cisco jumped backwards away from Doctor Caitlin, eyes stretched wide. The Doctor blinked at him in confusion.

“Are you okay?” She asked gently. “You started spacing out.”

“I-I’m sorry, Ma’am,” Cisco whispered, “I didn’t-I didn’t mean to use my powers. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so so sorry. I know you didn’t give me any permission, Ma’am, and-please don’t punish me, I know I was a bad Asset. I know I deserve to be punished.”

“You used your powers?” The Doctor asked, although it was more like a statement of fact than an actual question. “What did you see?”

Cisco trembled. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry-”

“It’s alright,” Doctor Caitlin sighed. “I don’t mind. You don’t even have to tell me what you saw if you don’t want to. I just wanted to make sure that you were okay. You’re not in trouble, I promise. It’s alright, okay? You aren’t in trouble for using your powers, especially not on accident.”

Cisco slowly stopped shaking (at least as much as he had been) and looked Doctor Caitlin slowly up and down. If Ronnie had been an Asset… And Caitlin was a Doctor…

Suddenly, something made sense in Cisco’s mind. Maybe… Maybe she had been in love with an Asset-Ronnie-and then he had Outlived His Usefulness. So the Supervisor had had him executed. That must have been it. Maybe the Ronnie-Asset had been killed  _ because  _ the Doctor had fallen in love with him, and the Supervisor hadn’t liked it at all. Cisco knew that Supervisors liked being in full control of everything, and proving to the people that worked for them that they were in charge.

Was that why the Doctor was so nice to him? Because she had been in love with an Asset? Was that why Barry liked her so much?

(Did Barry know that the Supervisor had Ordered the execution of an Asset (no, no, he had to remember, they were called  _ metahumans  _ here, metahumans or metas)? No, no, surely he didn’t-Barry seemed to think that the Supervisor was a  _ good person,  _ instead of a terrible scary bad Supervisor that would kill him if they had any reason to whatsoever.)

And… And did that make Doctor Caitlin a Safe person? Like Barry was?

No. She couldn’t have been, not yet anyways. Maybe she had even helped the Supervisor and Handler Rathaway kill the Ronnie-Asset, even if she had been in love with him. Cisco still had to be careful, he still had to watch his back, he still couldn’t trust anybody but himself and Bette and maybe  _ (just maybe)  _ Barry, too.

“Come on,” Doctor Caitlin coaxed, “we were going to go eat some of the stuff that Barry brought back from Jitters. If we don’t move fast, he’ll eat all of it before we even get there. Although Hartley will probably help him at least a little bit. He refuses to drink any coffee that doesn’t come from an actual coffeeshop.” Cisco didn’t really know how to respond to that, so he just curled up on himself. Doctor Caitlin sighed. “It’s okay. Come on, you need to eat.”

That was an Order. That was an Order. Which meant Cisco needed to follow it or else there would be even bigger consequences than there were for using his powers without any permission. He stood up, tucked his hands behind his back and lowered his head, and waited for any further Orders.

Doctor Caitlin smiled at him, even though Cisco couldn’t see it because of the way that he was looking at the floor. “Alright, just follow me. I can show you where the lunchroom is, if you want, but I’m pretty sure that they’re all already in the Cortex. But Barry might have to leave soon-he said that there was a cold case that he was supposed to be working on, or else Singh will kill him.”

Cisco froze, his breath coming quicker as his heart rate sped up. Somebody was going to kill Barry? Was Singh another Handler? He was pretty sure that the Supervisor was named ‘Wells’, but what if Singh was some sort of… Under-Supervisor? Or an Enforcer?

Did that mean that Barry had broken the Rules? So now Singh would kill him? No, no, no, that meant that Cisco would have to be a good little Asset but still draw the attention onto himself somehow. So that they wouldn’t hurt Barry and would hurt him instead.

Obediently, Cisco followed Doctor Caitlin away from his nice Safe cell and toward the elevator before getting out and continuing to follow her as she led him toward the room that she and the Handler had called the Cortex.

Handler Rathaway was already sitting in one of the chairs, Barry perched comfortably in the one beside him. There were several large paper bags on the desk in front of them, and Handler Rathaway was sipping from a paper cup with a cardboard loop around it so that it wouldn’t burn his hands.

(Cisco couldn’t get the way that his voice had sounded out of his head. How-how  _ different  _ it had sounded from the way that he usually spoke, the way that  _ all _ Handlers usually spoke. How scared he had sounded, how desperate. Almost as much as Doctor Caitlin herself. But more… More… More… Cisco didn’t even know how to describe it. Doctor Caitlin had sounded horrified, yes, but Handler Rathaway had been resigned.)

Barry beamed at Cisco. “Hey, you’re here!” He opened the paper bag and reached inside, pulling out a much smaller bag and holding it out like he wanted Cisco to take it. “Do you want some?”

Cisco froze. What was he supposed to say? Of course he wanted some, even though it was obviously full of drugs, but he didn’t have any permission from the Handlers or the Doctor or-or anyone. Which meant that he couldn’t say yes, no matter how much he wanted to. This was clearly an elaborate test, and that meant that Cisco had to pass it.

Handler Rathaway frowned at him slightly. “You’re allowed to have some, you know. If it’s offered to you, it’s allowed. You can have as much as you want.”

Cisco shifted nervously, and in the blink of an eye Barry had pressed the paper bag into his hands and was back in his seat. “There you go. Now you have to eat it.”

Doctor Caitlin stepped around Cisco, making him flinch, and picked up another paper cup that Cisco hadn’t noticed. He wondered what she was going to do with it-dump the probably scalding contents all over him? Drug it and then force him to drink it? Something even worse? But the Doctor didn’t do any of those things. Instead, she just took a sip from the hole in the lid and screwed up her face.

“That’s really hot,” she remarked, sitting down in the third seat, so that Handler Rathaway was in between her and Barry. It was probably so that he was within punishing distance of the Handler’s fists or belt.

Handler Rathaway snickered at her. “I know, that’s why it says ‘caution: contents may be hot’ on the side.”

Doctor Caitlin rolled her eyes and looked at Barry. “How’s Iris?”

Cisco didn’t miss the dusting of pink that colored his fellow Asset’s cheeks as he answered. “She’s fine. She says hi, by the way. And she told me to tell Hartley that there’s a cute new regular who comes in on Tuesdays. A biochem major who goes to Central City Community college and works at Mercury Labs.”

Handler Rathaway frowned slightly. “College?”

“Calm down, he’s your age. I’m pretty sure that he’s just a young professor,” Barry said with a shrug.

The Handler crossed his arms. “Then why didn’t you say that first instead talking like he was a student?”

As he watched the two argue playfully, Cisco’s eyes steadily widened (he didn’t even notice that he was eating from the bag, although the others did). Barry-Barry was  _ talking without permission,  _ and he was  _ directly disagreeing  _ with a Handler. Didn’t he realize what a bad idea that was? Didn’t he know that he would be punished? Barry may have been a new Asset, but even new Assets would know not to talk back to a Handler.

“At least I haven’t been chasing after the same girl since I was five,” Handler Rathaway shot, and Barry rolled his eyes while blushing scarlet.

“True, but at least I’ve  _ dated  _ people,” the speedster jabbed back, leaning back into his chair like he’d just won the entire arguement. Cisco trembled. He knew that Handlers didn’t like it when anybody talked back, and acting superior… Acting like Barry was better… That was just asking for trouble.

Handler Rathaway huffed and curled his upper lip. “I’ve dated people, too, Allen. Chip, James, Earl…” He ticked the names off on his fingers. “And I had more than a few one-night stands.”

Barry didn’t seem to be able to come up with an answer to that (although if he had had more time he was certain that he could have), instead settling on elbowing the Handler in the side.

Cisco let out a small strangled gasp. No, no, no, no, didn't Barry know? Even if he was new, every Asset knew not to fight back. And elbowing someone, touching them at all without permission, that was fighting back. Now Barry would be punished, he would be beaten and thrown in the Pit, and Cisco would be hurt too. Whenever he had failed or done something wrong, Eiling had punished both him  _ and  _ Bette.

No, no, no, no, please, please, Cisco would let Handler Rathaway do whatever he wanted to him, anything that he wanted. Anything. Just let Barry go, just leave him alone. Cisco could teach him, tell him how to be a good Asset and teach him how to Obey Orders. Not to fight back against the Handlers, not ever. Please, please, Cisco could teach him, please, he could teach him-

“I’ll teach him,” Cisco said in a rush, making himself small as all eyes turned to look at him. “I can teach him-please, Handler Rathaway Sir, please don’t punish him, hurt me instead, I can teach him to be better, I can teach him to Obey, please, Sir-”

“Huh?” Barry blinked as his eyes flickered back and forth between Handler Rathaway and Cisco himself. “What do you mean?” When Cisco paused, Barry added, “It’s okay, you’re allowed to tell me.”

“You-you fought back,” Cisco whispered, cringing away from Handler Rathaway and Doctor Caitlin. “You fought back and that’s against the R-Rules and-and-and-”

Cisco tried to take a few deep breaths, tears stinging his eyes as a few of them started making their way down his cheeks.

“Whoa, whoa, hey,” Barry said, jumping out of his chair and kneeling down in front of Cisco, resting his hands on his shoulders. “It’s okay, it’s alright. Don’t worry, okay? Hartley’s my friend, it’s not like that. He’s just teasing, it’s okay. We’re friends, he won’t hurt me and he won’t hurt you.”

Teasing? Cisco knew about teasing. Teasing was like taunting and mocking and sneering. Teasing called up long-buried memories of hiding somewhere that smelled bad and stained his pants with water from the floor, of scraped knees and a familiar voice telling someone else to go away, or else-no. Cisco wasn’t allowed to remember anything like that. Anything from Before.

But what he  _ was _ allowed to remember were the cruel Handlers that he had had before, the ones that mocked and taunted him, the ones that had enjoyed all of the pain that they inflicted. They were different from the other Handlers, who didn’t care either way. The ones for which it was just a job, just a way to feed themselves. Cisco had only had two Handlers like that. One of them had been the best that he had ever had before she disappeared. And the other one had only been around for a few weeks at the most.

If Handler Rathaway was one of the ones that enjoyed pain, that meant that Cisco would have to be extra good. He would have to be so good that the Handler wouldn’t want to punish  _ either _ of them. Cisco would be on his best behavior, he would be the best Asset. And he would help Barry learn how to follow the Rules, too.

Please, please, he could teach him, he could, he could, he could-

“Come on,” Barry said softly as the speedster guided him over to the chair that he had vacated to comfort Cisco. “Just sit here and eat, alright? It’s okay, see? You’re safe.”

Cisco chewed nervously on the flaky buttery thing that had been inside the bag. He hadn’t even noticed that he had started eating. It was  _ good,  _ so good, much better than anything that he had had in a long time, even the soup before. And there was something dark and sweet inside of it that surprised him and tasted like the warm thing that Handler Rathaway had given him to drink before.

“Do you like it?” Doctor Caitlin asked.

Cisco hesitated. He had to answer truthfully, or else there would be consequences. But-but was he allowed to enjoy anything? Was he allowed to enjoy this? Uncertain of what their reactions would be, Cisco ducked his head and nodded, looking at the floor and automatically tucking his hands behind his back (which moved the bag back there too).

Even though he didn’t see it, Doctor Caitlin smiled at Cisco. “Good, I’m glad.” She paused. “You’re going to need a bath soon, and a change of clothes. A haircut, too, probably.”

Cisco froze, heart pounding in his ears. No, no, no, no, they only wanted him clean when they were going to cut him, they only did things like that when they wanted to slice open his skin. And if they weren’t going to do that, then surely they were going to hold him down underwater until he was thrashing and gasping and coughing desperately while he tried to break free and take a breath.

His entire body started to shiver, trembling as he shrank down onto himself and whimpered quietly. Please, please, if they were going to cut him, if they were going to slice his flesh open and expose his organs to the air and study and poke and prod them, please just give him a chance to prepare himself. Please, please, please, please…

Tears blurred Cisco’s vision as he tried to compose himself, tried to be a good Asset and not show any fear. If what Barry had said was true, then Handler Rathaway would enjoy his pain. Taunt him and mock him and-and-and-

Cisco sniffled and forced himself to stay in his submissive position.

Barry exchanged a glance with Hartley and Caitlin and knelt down in front of the quivering metahuman. “What’s wrong? Was it something that Caitlin said?” When his only response was a small sobbing sound, Barry sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s okay, you can tell me.”

“I don’t want to-please don’t cut me, please don’t hold me down underwater, please, please, I’ll try to be good, I’ll try to be a good Asset, please, please, please. Please.”

“What?! No!” Barry’s eyes stretched wide. “No, why would we-we would never-”

Cisco trembled, teeth chattering. “She-she said that-a bath, and haircut-I don’t want to-please-”

Doctor Caitlin’s shook her head, breath catching in her throat. “I would never-I promise, Carlos, I won’t ever hurt you, and that includes all of the things that you just said.”

“We just wanted you to have a bath because, well, you kind of smell, and you’re pretty dirty. And it’ll give us a chance to give you some new clean clothes,” Barry explained hastily. “We won’t hurt you, I promise. The haircut is only if you feel up for it, and if you don’t want to cut it then we can leave it the way that it is.”

Cisco tugged on a strand of hair self-consciously. Eiling had usually kept him shaved, but for the past few… Months? (Maybe. Cisco didn’t know) He hadn’t done so, and let Cisco’s hair grow out long. Easier to grab and use to throw him and pin him and drag him down the cold hallways back into his cramped cell or drop him down into the Pit and leave him there.

Maybe that was what they were going to do with the ha i rcut. Maybe they would shave his head like Eiling had, quick and rough and leaving all sorts of nicks and scrapes behind. That would be better, maybe, than leaving it long, because if it was long then they would easily be able to grab fistfuls of it and use it to drag him around.

“If you don’t want a haircut, that’s okay,” Handler Rathaway added. “You won’t be punished.” Doctor Caitlin looked at him in confusion and the Handler shrugged before lowering his voice down to a whisper (Cisco still caught it easily). “Look at him, Caitlin. He’s terrified.”

The Doctor sighed. “Well, before we do anything, I want to make sure that you take a shower. No haircuts if you don’t want them, I promise, but your injuries could get worse if they stay dirty like this. Is that okay, Carlos? Can you do that for me, take a shower? It won’t hurt at all, I promise.”

Cisco nodded quickly and stared hard at the floor. He understood that it wasn’t his place to try to argue, that he would have to do whatever Doctor Caitlin wanted him to. He understood that-of course he did. Cisco was a good Asset, and he lived to Obey.

Doctor Caitlin sighed before exchanging a glance with Barry. “Alright, then, just follow me, okay?”

Cisco shook and followed behind her and Barry, making himself small as he let her lead him out of the room and down the hallway. He wasn’t going to cry, he wasn’t going to cry, he was a big boy and he wasn’t going to cry. Barry hung back and squeezed his shoulder gently. “It’s okay,” he said softly. “I know you’re scared of us, but we won’t ever hurt you. Not me, not Caitlin, not Joe, not Hartley, not Wells. None of us are going to hurt you. I promise.”

Cisco whimpered. “You can’t say that, you-you’re an Asset, Assets can’t make promises like that.”

“Well, I can,” Barry said firmly but not unkindly. “I’m your friend, Carlos, and I promise I’m going to keep you safe, alright? But I don’t have to protect you here. Nobody at STAR Labs wants to hurt you or me or any of the metahumans, even if they’ve done something wrong. I told you, we aren’t like the people who hurt you before. We just want to help people. People like you.”

“Don’t say things like that!” Cisco cried, flinching back at his own raised voice and sniffling as Doctor Caitlin turned around and looked at him with confusion in her eyes. “You-you can’t say things like that, you don’t have to try to make me feel be-better, I already kn-know my place, I know th-that I’m a failure and an Asset and that’s all I’ll ever be, please don’t lie j-just to make it all feel w-worse later when you decide it’s time for-for-”

“Barry isn’t lying, Carlos,” Doctor Caitlin said softly. “He’s telling you the truth. None of us here will hurt you. We just want to help you find your family and recover from what the awful people who hurt you did to you.”

Cisco looked at the floor. He knew better than to talk back to a Doctor, but that didn’t mean that he agreed with her. Let her think that if she wanted, but Cisco knew the truth. He’d never really be free. Besides, they hadn’t done anything to him that he didn’t deserve.

Doctor Caitlin gestured to the door in front of them as she came to a halt. “It won’t be the most comfortable, I’m sorry, since they were originally designed to wash off potentially harmful chemicals, but it’ll do. There’s soap already in there, and we’ll get you some nice clean clothes while you’re showering. You can take as long as you want. Turn the knob to the right for warm water and to the left for cold water, and then all the way to the left to turn it off.”

Cisco hesitated for a moment as Doctor Caitlin opened the door and flipped on the light, pointing inside. Barry smiled encouragingly at him. “Go ahead. It’s okay.”

Cisco Obeyed, stepping inside. There were a few showers, all of them with the same familiar nozzle shape as the showers that Eiling had let him use whenever he had been particularly good and Obedient (which wasn’t very often). Doctor Caitlin took a small step back. “I’m going to be waiting right outside for you, alright? You can come out whenever you’re ready, there’s no rush. I promise.”

Cisco swallowed and waited for her to give him  _ official  _ permission to turn on the shower. Barry seemed to realize what he was waiting for and let out a small sigh. “We told you, you don’t have to wait for permission here, Carlos. You can do whatever you want as long as it doesn’t hurt someone at all.”

Slowly, Cisco reached out to turn the knob on. Doctor Caitlin frowned a little. “Don’t you want to take your clothes off first? The water gets warm pretty fast.”

“I’m sorry ma-Doctor Caitlin,” Cisco whispered. Terrified, he wriggled out of his clothes, clutching them to his bare chest when they were off and looking at her in confusion. What was he supposed to do with them now? Had this all been a trick? Were they actually just going to hurt him now that the meager protection that his clothes offered him was gone? “Wh-what do you want me to do-to do with my clothes now?”

The Doctor gently took them from him, wincing at the newly revealed ribs, scars, and bruises. “I’ll take them. They need to be washed anyways. Barry will get you fresh clothes while you’re showering, okay? Do you think that’ll be alright?”

Cisco looked at the floor. It wasn’t like he had a choice in the matter. “Yes Doctor Caitlin.”

“You can just call me Caitlin if you want,” she said gently. “You don’t have to say ‘doctor’ if you don’t want to. I know that the people who hurt you made you scared of doctors. Would it make you feel better if you called me something else? Like a medic?”

Cisco shook his head quickly and bit his lip, tucking his hands behind his back. He didn’t look up from the floor. “It-it’s alright, ma’am. I-I mean-it’s alright, Doctor Caitlin. I know my place. It’s okay.”

She exchanged a look with Barry. “Okay, Carlos. Whatever makes you feel the most comfortable is fine with us. We just want you to feel safe. We don’t expect you to trust us right away, I promise.” She took another step back, reaching to close the door. “You can shower now. It doesn’t matter how long it takes. You… You have my permission to take as long as you need to shower. Do you understand?”

“Yes Doctor Caitlin.” Cisco bobbed his head as she smiled at him and shut the door. He turned around and swallowed thickly. He had to be fast. Whatever they might have said, he knew that they expected him to take a fast, cold shower and be done as soon as he possibly could. He turned on the water and stepped underneath it, wincing at the cold and at the powerful spray.

He could take it. He’d endured worse, much worse, he could handle this. Cisco took a deep breath and then drank some of the water coming out of the showerhead. They may have been giving him quite a bit of water even though they were Handlers, but that didn’t mean that he didn’t have to make absolutely sure he wouldn’t die of dehydration. So he had to drink some of this even if it left a bit of a bitter taste in his mouth.

Outside the door, Caitlin rubbed her forehead. Barry was already gone, getting Carlos fresh clean clothes that weren’t ripped and filthy. This was a nightmare. She wasn’t a pediatrician or a psychologist. The frantic reading up that she had done the other night hadn’t done much to prepare her for dealing with abused and scared children in real life. Hell, they didn’t even know how old the kid was! They didn’t even know his real name! How were they supposed to find his family, find the people who had done this to him, if they didn’t even know what they were supposed to be looking for?

Barry returned with a  _ whoosh  _ of wind and lightning, holding some clothes. “I think these will fit him. They might be a little big, but I don’t think he’ll mind. He was so happy to get that sweatshirt last night and it was big enough that it was practically swallowing him.”

Caitlin looked at the door. She could hear the water pouring behind it and hoped that if he had any problems Carlos would come out and tell them instead of trying to deal with it himself. And they’d be able to hear him if he got hurt in there somehow, right? Caitlin shook her head and told herself to stop worrying. He’d be fine, it was just a shower.

Barry nudged her with his shoulder. “Earth to Caitlin. You okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said, shaking her head and pulling herself out of her thoughts. “Just-worried. About Carlos, or whatever his real name is.”

“Me too,” Barry sighed, leaning against the wall. He fiddled with the sleeve of the shirt that he was carrying. “I want to help him so badly, I want to find whoever it is that hurt him and make them _ pay.  _ He’s a little kid, Caitlin, or at least he looks like one. How did we miss this? How did the  _ police  _ miss this? It doesn’t make any sense. Someone should’ve known, even if it was somebody with a lot of influence.”

Caitlin swallowed. “I don’t know. I really don’t know.” She changed the subject. “Why were you late this morning?”

Barry shrugged a little, smiling to himself as he rocked back on his heels. “I got a little, ah, held up.” He looked like he had just told a private joke to himself, and at Caitlin’s confused look he snickered. “Sorry. You had to have been there.”

“...Okay.” Caitlin shook her head as Barry’s phone buzzed. He checked it, balancing his clothes in his other hand, and sighed before handing the bundle to Caitlin.

“There was a homicide,” he explained, “I gotta go.”

Caitlin juggled the clothes for a moment. “Good-” Barry zoomed away and she sighed, trying in vain to brush the hair out of her face as she heard the water turn off and the door opened to reveal a shivering, wet, naked Carlos. “Luck,” she finished, shaking her head and holding out the clothes for Carlos to take. “I’m sorry we don’t have a towel for you.”

He shook his head. “It’s-it's alright, Doctor Caitlin. I wasn’t-I wasn't expecting one.”

“Well, I’m sorry anyway. I hope your clothes don’t get too wet.” She chewed on her lip and wondered if now would be the right time for her to tell him that she had started privately making plans with Joe. Probably not. “C’mon, let’s go back to the Cortex. You can have some more food if you want.”

* * *

“Are you okay?” Barry asked, fiddling with the camera around his neck. He’d gotten a few good pictures of their victim’s fried body, but he might need to take a couple more if they wanted to do some facial reconstruction to ID them. “You seem a little… Off.”

Joe shook his head. “No, I’m fine.” He paused and decided to tell Barry a part of the truth. “Other than how worried I am about that kid STAR Labs has locked up like a criminal.”

Barry winced at the disapproving tone. “I know, I know, it’s not the best situation, but we don’t really have anywhere else for him to go. Caitlin can’t take him, Wells can’t take him, as much as I want to I can’t take him, and I don’t really think Hartley would be the best person for him, or even in the top five-”

“I’ve been talking to Caitlin,” Joe interrupted, “about moving him to my place. I’m a licensed foster parent, I know how to deal with abuse cases, and having him living in an actual  _ house  _ is miles better than keeping him in a tiny cell with a cot.”

Barry frowned a little. “Are you sure you want to take him? We don’t know how he’ll react when he’s moved to a new place, especially since he’s scared of all of us-you included. What if it just makes him worse? Yeah, keeping him in the Pipeline is far from the best situation, but at least we can keep him safe there in case whoever it was that hurt him tries to come after him again.”

Joe narrowed his eyes. “Barry, I love you, but do you really think that keeping that poor kid in a cell inside of a  _ lab  _ that clearly reminds him of the horrific things that were done to him is better for his health than a real bed and meals that aren’t just sandwiches and whatever it is that Hartley decides to put in the microwave?”

“I-I guess not,” Barry admitted. “But what will Dr. Wells say? He already said that he wanted to keep the kid under his supervision. Carlos doesn’t know how to control his powers, he’s unstable. What if he loses control at your house and accidentally hurts you? Hurts Iris?”

“Fine,” Joe relented. “He can stay at STAR Labs for a little while longer. But next time something goes wrong, he’s coming back home with me so he can recover until we find his family.”

Barry hesitated. “Alright. I don’t think Dr. Wells will like it, but fine.” He looked at the charred body on the ground and wrinkled his nose. “I should probably get these pictures and samples to STAR Labs. See you later.”

* * *

Cisco hugged his knees to his chest, chewing his fingernails. Handler Rathaway had given him another one of the sweet red rope candies earlier, but instead of saving it Cisco had stuck it in his pocket when nobody was looking so he could save it and then eat it later.

Barry had run off, he’d come back for two minutes to talk to Handler Rathaway and Doctor Caitlin about rebuilding someone’s face (or something like that) before Handler Rathaway had gotten an alert and then Barry had taken off, using his powers  _ without permission  _ to presumably hunt down another Asset. He was back now though, he had been for a while, off talking in the other room with Handler Rathaway, Doctor Caitlin, and the Supervisor.

Cisco swallowed and tucked himself deeper into his new clothes. He hadn’t been expecting to get them, he’d assumed that he would be dragged back to his cell by the Doctor while he was still naked. But the clothes were soft, warmer and thicker than he had thought they would be, so he wasn’t exactly objecting to getting them.

But something was wrong with Barry, and that worried Cisco. A lot. Barry’s heartbeat had been  _ different  _ when he got back, it had been different and  _ wrong  _ and weird and he didn’t like it, not at all. Instead of humming it thrummed slowly, like a normal person’s, not an Asset. What was wrong? Clearly something was. It was why the Supervisor had taken him away.

Cisco made a tiny sobbing sound as a thought occurred to him. Was Barry a defective Asset now? Was he going to be disposed of? If the change in his heartbeat (and the way that Cisco’s blood had suddenly stopped humming whenever Barry was nearby) was anything to go by, something was seriously wrong with him, and when things were  _ wrong  _ with Assets then they got disposed of. Simple as that.

So Barry was going to be disposed of.

Cisco’s breathing went fast as he wondered how they were going to do it. Probably painfully, oh so painfully, draw it out and make him suffer for his disobedience. Hurt him in ways that Cisco hadn’t even known existed. They would make him  _ pay  _ for his defect and they would torture him to death and they would do experiments on him before he died, of course they would, to see how the defect had changed him. To see what Barry had done to make himself bad and wrong and defective.

He sniffled. Would they make him watch? As a lesson? To show him what would happen if  _ he  _ was ever defective? They probably would. The Supervisor would Order him to stay still and then he would be forced to keep watching as they broke Barry over and over and over again until he died.

Reaching up and covering his ears over the dampeners, Cisco rocked back and forth a little in the chair. If they didn’t make him watch, were they actually killing Barry right now? Were they breaking him down and cutting him open and letting him bleed out on the floor? Was Cisco never going to get a chance to say goodbye, just like he hadn’t gotten a chance to say goodbye to Bette?

He started crying harder, shoulders shaking with sobs. Please no, please, he couldn’t lose somebody else who had tried to help him, even if they  _ did  _ hunt down other Assets (not that it was Barry’s fault, of course. He didn’t have a choice, of course he didn’t have a choice, Assets never got a choice. They had to do whatever their masters wanted them to do).

Cisco’s ears pricked up as he heard footsteps coming toward him and he hastily wiped his eyes. Couldn’t show weakness in front of the Supervisor and in front of Handler Rathaway or Doctor Caitlin. Bette and maybe Barry were the only ones that it was okay to show weakness around. Assets were the only ones who could help each other, the only ones that Cisco could possibly show any sort of weakness around, and that meant that crying was not allowed. Never allowed.

_ (“Shut up, brat.” One of the guards slapped Cisco across the face, and he let out a tiny sob as he curled up on himself. “No whining. You knew better than that.” _

_ “Yes, Ma’am,” Cisco said, dipping his head. _

_ “Stop sniveling. I thought I told you to shut up.” The guard shook her head and Cisco flinched, swallowing back a tiny whimper. “Be quiet unless you want me to tell the General that you were being disobedient. Do you want that?” _

_ Cisco shook his head quickly. “N-no Ma’am.”) _

“Whoa, hey-Carlos, what’s wrong?” 

Cisco flinched. That was Barry, that was  _ Barry,  _ he was  _ alive  _ they hadn’t killed him for being defective. Or at least not yet. That meant that they were going to make him watch, they were going to make him watch as they killed him to show him what would happen.

“Pl-please,” he whispered, “please, you have to try, you have to try not to be so defective, please, please, they’ll-they’ll kill you if you don’t-if you don’t-please-”

“Hey, hey, it’s okay. Can I give you a hug?” Barry asked. Through his tea-blurred vision, Cisco could see that he was holding out his arms, ready to wrap Cisco up in them. “I won’t hurt you, I promise, I just think that it would make you feel a little better if I gave you a hug.”

Tentatively, Cisco nodded, biting his lower lip. Barry leaned down, giving him a huge, warm, tight hug that lasted for a few long seconds before the other Asset stepped away, giving Cisco a small reassuring smile.

“There, that feels a little better, right?” Barry waited until Cisco nodded slowly, still unsure. He wondered where the Supervisor, the Handler, and the Doctor were. Maybe they were getting the tools that they would need to use to dispose of Barry now that he was defective? “Now can you tell me what’s wrong?”

“They-you’re defective,” Cisco whispered, lowering his gaze down to the floor. “They’re g-going to-to dispose of you because you’re defective, because something went wrong, so you-you have to try to keep being useful, you have to keep being useful or else they’re gonna get  _ rid  _ of you!”

“Oh, no, no,” Barry said hastily, shaking his head fast (but not as fast as he had been able to before, something that made Cisco feel sick to his stomach). “Nobody is going to ‘dispose’ of me, I promise. They’re my friends, they’d never hurt me, just like they would never hurt you. I-something happened, we don’t know what, not yet, so we’re just going to run some tests to see what happened. But  _ nobody  _ is going to hurt me or kill me. I promise, Carlos.”

Cisco sniffled. “But-your heart, it sounds different, it sounds like you’re  _ sick,  _ I don’t want you to be sick, I don’t-I don’t want them to have to put you down, I-I can try to fix it, I can try to fix you. I don’t think I can but-but if it means that you will not be disposed of then-”

“Carlos,” Barry said gently, “this isn’t something that you can fix. It’s not… It’s not like a machine, or anything. Caitlin says that this is scientifically impossible-not that anything else I can do isn’t either-but it’s happening. You can’t do anything, I’m sorry. Dr. Wells, Caitlin, and Hartley are all working on figuring something out right now. And nobody is going to-to ‘put me down’, okay? It’s not like that here.”

“But-” Cisco flinched as he heard more footsteps, cutting himself off.

“Barry,” Handler Rathaway’s voice said as he held something out-a tablet, like the kind that Eiling’s Doctors had recently started using to take notes on. “I got the name out the guy who sucked your powers out. Farooq Gibran.”

Barry took the tablet from him. “How do you know?”

Handler Rathaway scoffed and Cisco cowered. Barry should’ve known better than to talk back to a  _ Handler  _ when he was already on such thin ice. “Once I hacked into the security camera footage from the substation and got a clear image it was easy to find a match.”

“He climbed an electrical tower the night of the accelerator explosion,” Barry mused. “That’s probably where his powers came from, right?”

“Gibran probably knew that person who died,” Handler Rathaway remarked, pointing to something on the tablet. “Or-ouch. Both of them. The other one died later at the hospital after spending a week in a coma.”

“What do you think-” Barry started, but a loud beeping sound interrupted him. Cisco cringed and covered his ears, blinking back tears. He could feel himself starting to cry again, and that was  _ wrong,  _ that was  _ bad,  _ it was Disobedient and weak and naughty and bad and wrong to cry and he couldn’t let himself cry. He couldn’t.

Handler Rathaway jumped and marched over to a… Box? A screen? Cisco was pretty sure that it was one of the monitors that Handler Rathaway and Doctor Caitlin had used to monitor Barry’s vital signs while he was hunting down the other Asset for them. Handler Rathaway peered down at the screen for a few seconds before swearing loudly as his eyes went wide.

“You have  _ got  _ to be kidding me,” he growled. “No, no, no-” He hit a button and spoke into a microphone. “Dr. Wells, Caitlin, get to the Cortex, now. He’s here, Farooq-I mean, the guy who took Barry’s speed, he’s here!”

Cisco’s breath went ragged as he hunched his shoulders. No, no, no, no, this couldn’t be happening. He knew what they would do. He knew what they would do. They were going to tell Barry that this was the only way to get his abilities back, the only way for him to continue to be useful to them, and then they would send him out to fight the bad new Asset and-and Barry would die. Barry would die. They wouldn’t even have to lift a finger to speed the process along.

Barry was going to die, and Cisco couldn’t do a single thing to stop that from happening.

There was a buzzing, grating sound that rang in Cisco’s ears, scratching at his brain, and he let out a tiny scream as the lights started to flicker. He could hear more footsteps (they must have belonged to Doctor Caitlin), and suddenly there were arms hugging him from behind and holding him tightly against someone’s warm chest.

“Shh, Carlos, it’s okay,” Barry said soothingly, and Cisco went limp. “It’s okay, that guy can’t hurt you, we aren’t going to let him, alright? He’s not going to hurt you, I promise. It’s okay. You’re going to be just fine, all of us are going to be just fine. I promise.” He looked over at Doctor Caitlin, who had just skidded into the room, hair messy. “Where’s Dr. Wells?”

“I don’t know,” Doctor Caitlin admitted. “We were talking and then he said that he had to leave but-he should be coming back, he must’ve heard Hartley yelling.”

“Gibran is going to take out half the city at this rate,” Hartley mumbled, shaking his head as he kept looking at the screen. “And the power here at STAR should go out in-”

The lights abruptly shut off and Cisco wailed as his eyes flashed gold. No vibe this time, something he was so, so grateful for, but he could feel his breathing going faster and his heartbeat kicking up as he rocked in place, trying to calm himself down. He couldn’t, he couldn’t, he couldn’t make himself calm down, no no no no no-

The entire building suddenly shook and Cisco almost threw up out of sheer panic. What was this, was it a test, was there actually a rogue Asset trying to break in and hurt them,  _ kill them,  _ trying to kill the  _ Supervisor?  _ Didn’t they know what would happen, what the Supervisor would do once the rogue Asset was caught?

“He’s inside,” Barry realized, holding Cisco tighter. Cisco could feel him trembling slightly, although he wasn’t sure whether Barry was shaking with fear from the rogue Asset or with fear from what he knew the Supervisor, the Handler, and the Doctor were going to make him do. And how he must’ve known that he would end up by the end of the night-dead. “I have to call Joe, I have to call Joe.”

He fumbled in his pockets and Cisco wondered what he was looking for. And why did he want to contact  _ Joe,  _ an  _ Enforcer,  _ someone who was going to hurt him? That didn’t make any sense. Barry may not have been a very good and Obedient Asset most of the time, but even he had to know that it was against the Rules to-well, Cisco didn’t know that it was exactly against the Rules, but it probably was considering that it seemed to be just another way of talking out of turn.

After several tense minutes (Cisco buried his head in his arms midway through and tried not to draw too much attention to himself), Barry finally managed to connect with someone, making a small triumphant noise. “Hey, uh-this’ll just take a second, I promise. I’ve been trying to get in touch with Joe, or anybody at the precinct really, but-” He paused, eyes widening. Cisco couldn’t make out what the other person was saying, they were too far away and the dampeners worked way too well. “Wait-”

The other person must’ve hung up, because Barry pulled the phone away from his ear, voice cracking as he said, “Joe and-and Iris are in trouble. I need my powers back,  _ now.” _

“I have a theory,” the Supervisor said, wheeling in and toying with his own glasses. Cisco’s breath hitched. “It’s untested.”

“I’m willing to do it,” Barry said immediately, clenching his fists down by his sides. “I’m willing to test it, I’ll roll the dice.”

“You’ve lost your speed, yes, but nothing has changed inside of you on a subatomic level,” the Supervisor said. “Your DNA is still the same as it was when you had your speed. Your cells are still primed.”

“They just need a jumpstart,” Handler Rathaway finished. He looked at Barry, who was already opening his mouth. “We’d need to replicate the initial shock to your system. Which would be about… A peak current of roughly 20,000 kiloamps-if we’re not careful that’ll-it’s more electricity than they give people in the  _ electric chair.” _

“With Gibran already here, Joe and Iris in danger-” Barry shook his head. “I have to do this.”

“The spare generator is offline,” Handler Rathaway sighed. “If we can reboot it, we can generate enough of a charge to zap you with that much energy.”

“We’d need something to transmit it from the generator to Barry’s body,” Doctor Caitlin argued. “Face it, this is impossible-you’re going to kill him.”

Cisco yelped, clapping his hands over his mouth. They seemed to have forgotten that he was there, which was good. If they forgot then they wouldn’t hurt him. No, no, no. He understood now. He understood what they were going to do. They were  _ lying  _ to Barry, they were telling him that this would fix him, but it was actually going to kill him. It was going to kill him and then they were going to make the rogue Asset into Barry’s replacement. Or they would make  _ Cisco  _ into Barry’s replacement. Make him hunt down other Assets. He couldn’t, he couldn’t, he couldn’t.

“The treadmill,” Handler Rathaway said, sending Cisco a small look of confusion before staring Doctor Caitlin down. “It can take the charge, I know it can.”

“But what if Barry can’t?” Doctor Caitlin crossed her arms over her chest. Cisco wondered if she just didn’t want to lose an Asset as valuable as Barry.

“Well, it’s his choice,” the Supervisor said. He looked at Barry, who swallowed.

“I-I’ll do it,” he decided. “But first-but first I’m gonna talk to him. Talk to Gibran and see if I can’t calm him down a little.” The Supervisor shook his head, opening his mouth to reprimand, but Barry interrupted him, much to Cisco’s horror and shock. “You weren’t there, at the substation, you didn’t see him. He needed to-to feed, off of the electricity. I got super speed after the blast but he got a  _ disease.  _ I have to try to help him.”

“That metahuman is a _murderer_ who electrocuted an innocent man. He is not like you.” The Supervisor’s voice was dangerous, and Cisco started crying silently into his hands. Doctor Caitlin gave him a worried sympathetic look and made a move like she was going to come over to comfort him before she stopped herself. “And without your powers you are helpless to stop him.”

“He needs help,” Barry said firmly, glaring at the Supervisor. Cisco felt like he was going to be sick. No, no, no, he couldn’t-Barry couldn’t-“That’s not something I need powers to offer him. I have to try.”

He turned around and ran off at a fraction of the speed that he usually possessed, leaving Cisco behind to sob into the floppy sleeves of his too-big shirt. Just like with Bette, he hadn’t even had a chance to say goodbye.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes." --Marcel Proust

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Same gore warnings that have already been applied, plus a new warning (it only applies for a sentence) for Woodward thinking that Wells is doing it with Barry (he's not). You should be able to tell when you're getting to it if you want to avoid it, since again it's only for one sentence and it's toward the beginning of the chapter, a few paragraphs down from the first line break.

“Caitlin, take Barry to the treadmill, get him ready. Hartley,” Dr. Wells said, leaning forwards, “turn the generator on and make sure that Barry gets the charge.”

Hartley blinked. “You’re not coming with me?” He tried to hide the strange hope in his voice. “Why? That guy wants to kill you!”

“Out of everything I’ve done in my life,” Wells growled, “out of everything that I have ever invented, my most important creation is the Flash. Barry Allen  _ must  _ have a future now go.  _ Go.” _

Hartley took off running, not bothering to look back as he fled from the scene. Wells narrowed his eyes. As difficult as this would be normally, it was going to be twice as hard when he had to deal with that little boy. He hadn’t caused any changes to the timeline, and as Wells could tell this set of events would’ve happened without his appearance, but that didn’t mean that he couldn’t be disposed of the minute he posed a threat to Barry’s safety.

The boy-Carlos, they had been calling him, a name that didn’t properly fit the boy-was  _ already  _ a danger to Barry. Already had shown that he could cut off a speedster from the speed force, something that made him incredibly dangerous not just to Barry but to Wells himself as well. If the brat found out about his powers…

Wells had to gain his trust. While it would be easy to put him in harm’s way with the metahuman currently stalking through STAR Labs, Barry would notice that something was wrong. And he couldn’t have that idiot hero finding out about him yet, could he? Besides, the boy could be taken care of in any number of other ways.

Which was why Wells was going to find him right now.

Before leaving the Cortex, Hartley (and there was something off about him, there had been for quite some time, but Wells couldn’t quite put his finger on it-the future headlines involving Hartley Rathaway, the Pied Piper, hadn’t changed, still showing him as a member of the Rogues with ties to heroism) had ordered the boy-ordered Carlos to stay hidden underneath a table until they told him that it was okay to come out.

As much as Wells knew that Caitlin hated to agree with Hartley about, well, anything, especially since this involved scaring an already traumatized child, she had reluctantly seconded the motion, telling Carlos that if he  _ did _ move because he had to then he wouldn’t be in any trouble. None at all. It was for his own safety that they were asking him to hide, since there was a very bad person on the loose who might’ve hurt him.

He wheeled into the Cortex, hands in his lap and a sympathetic smile on his face. Caitlin and Barry hadn’t arrived yet-they must’ve gotten held up somehow. Maybe Barry had been more injured than he had seemed. 

“Carlos?” He called softly, narrowing his eyes. “Carlos, are you still here?”

There was a tiny squeak from underneath a desk, and the tiny metahuman stuck his head out. “Y-yes Sir. I Obeyed Orders and stayed s-still, Sir.”

“Good job,” Wells praised, still smiling. “There’s been a slight change in plans. You’re going to come with me so I can keep you safe from Gibran. I won’t hurt you, I promise, but it is… Necessary that I take you with me in case Gibran comes here and tries to hurt you. I’m going to keep you safe.”

The boy made a small fearful noise. “Yes Sir. I understand Sir. What do you want me to do, Sir? I promise that I will be good, I will do-I will do whatever it is that you want me to do, please Sir.” He paused. “I-I know that I am talking out of turn, Sir, I know that-that I am being very very bad, but-please, please tell me, have you d-disposed of-of Barry yet?”

Wells jolted a little. “What gives you that idea?” He tried to keep his voice even. “Barry is still alive, he hasn’t been, ah, ‘disposed of’. In fact, Dr. Snow and Mr. Rathaway are working on a way for him to get his powers back right now as we speak. They should be here soon-Mr. Rathaway is turning on the generator, so we should get the power back online soon.”

“Oh,” the boy-Carlos whispered. “So-so Barry is still alive?”

“Barry’s going to be just fine. Now why don’t you come with me?” Wells turned his chair around, waiting for the boy to crawl out from underneath the desk, which he did as fast as possible before jumping to his feet and standing with his hands behind his back and his head bowed next to Wells. “Very good, Carlos. Just follow me and I’ll keep you safe.”

The boy nodded as Wells started rolling out of the Cortex, following quickly but being careful not to outpace him. Wells considered striking up a conversation was they went; something that would help gain the child’s trust, help him realize that Wells was never going to hurt him-or at least make him think that that was the case. Instead, he asked the same question that they had asked Carlos several times before.

“What’s your name?” Wells wasn’t really expecting an answer. Why would he get one? The boy clearly didn’t trust them and he doubted that he was going to start trusting them for a long time. He’d been abused, he’d had his trust destroyed, and it was going to take a long time for him to trust anybody at STAR Labs.

Wells could be patient.

“I-I-” The boy stammered, shaking. “I-please, Sir, you already gave me a name, Carlos, which means that that is my name now. That is my name and 005 is my number, Sir.”

“You can call me Dr. Wells, or just Wells if you want,” he said mildly. “You don’t have to call anybody ‘Sir’ here.”

“But-but you’re a  _ Supervisor,” _ Carlos said, emphasizing the last word. “Of course I have to call you ‘Sir’, Sir. It’s the easiest way to show my respect for a human, who is therefore of a higher standing, which means that they are better than I am since I am not human.”

“Of course you’re a human.” Wells narrowed his eyes behind his glasses, inspecting the boy. “You may be a meta, but that doesn’t mean that you’re… Lesser.”

Carlos looked at the floor. “Yes, Sir-I-I mean-sorry, Dr. Wells Sir, I understand.”

“We’ll work on it,” Wells murmured, shaking his head. Carlos looked at his feet and sniffled. Wells looked away from him and moved a little faster down the hallway. “Come on, Carlos. I have a plan.”

* * *

Cisco shifted nervously as he looked at the Supervisor out of the corner of his eye. He had Obeyed and used his powers to open the large heavy door that he recognized as leading to the hallway that opened into a cell that was almost identical to the one that he had been living in. All of them were probably the same. Now the Supervisor was waiting in front of a cell, leaning forward with his eyes narrowed.

A new Asset, once that Cisco had never seen before, was standing in the cell, palms pressed against the transparent door. They were muscular, with short hair and a few tattoos on their arms. They looked  _ dangerous, _ and Cisco didn’t want to think about the Supervisor forcing them to fight like he had been forced to fight Bette a few times.

“Mr. Woodward,” the Supervisor said, voice tight, “it’s in your best interest to help me.  _ Quid pro quo.  _ I let you out of here, you kill Farooq Gibran. You’ll get to go free afterwards, although I take no responsibility for your actions and if you get arrested or start committing crimes again only to get caught once again by the Flash, then I will not extend this offer again.”

The Asset, Woodward, looked at Cisco and raised their eyebrows. “Who’s this? Another one of your little  _ pets  _ that Allen caught?” They curled their lip and Cisco flinched. “How are you getting Allen to do your dirty work anyways? You sleeping with him? I thought Allen was always trying to get with West.”

The Supervisor rubbed the bridge of his nose, rolling his eyes in disgust. As if he would ever… “I can assure you, Mr. Woodward, Barry and I are colleagues and nothing more.” Wells had to remind himself that Woodward had no idea of his plans involving Barry-or more accurately, his plans involving the Flash, and how he was going to kill him. Once he had the means to return to his own time, of course. “He just has a bit of a penchant for… Heroism.”

Cisco considered hiding behind the Supervisor. He did  _ not  _ like this Asset. He knew that Assets were supposed to watch out for each other, they were supposed to keep each other safe, but… He didn’t want to be down here with this angry Asset any longer than he possibly had to. And the Supervisor was scaring him, terrifying him. Cisco wanted to go back to his cell, wanted to go back to his safe, safe cell with his cot and no chains and the weird padded wall.

But more than anything, Cisco wanted Bette to come back. He needed Bette, he missed her so much, he needed Bette, he needed her, he needed her so badly. But Bette was never coming back, and the knowledge of that grew more and more and more painful with every moment that passed without her with him.

The Woodward-Asset shifted in place, narrowing his eyes before snorting. “Fine. I’ll be your attack dog. Let me out, I’ll kill your guy, and then I go on my merry way and you never have to see me again. Deal?”

The Supervisor looked at Cisco. “Use your powers to open the cell, Carlos.”

Squeezing his eyes shut, Cisco did as he was asked, whimpering as he felt the machinery hum and shift in response to his vibrations. It echoed through his bones, rattled in his lungs, and made him want to cry, but crying was weakness. He wasn’t allowed to cry. Crying was weakness. Crying was weakness. Crying was weakness. Never allowed to show weakness, not in front of the Supervisor. Never in front of the Supervisor.

The Asset stepped out of the cell as soon as the door was opened enough, cracking their knuckles and popping their neck as they stretched. They bared their teeth at Cisco and the Supervisor. “What’s to stop me from going back on the deal and just killing you now, huh?”

The Supervisor narrowed his eyes and glanced at Cisco. “Carlos, show Woodward your blasts.”

Order, Order, that was an Order, and Cisco knew better than to go back on an Order, especially one said by a  _ Supervisor  _ of all people. Cisco ducked his head in a nod and let translucent energy bubble at his fingertips, sending a small wave of exhaustion rippling over him and making him sway a little bit on his feet. He was so tired, he hadn’t been getting enough sleep because of the nightmares, and using his powers offensively was just making him even more tired.

The Woodward-Asset whistled and shook their head. “So what? I put a toe out of line and your kid shoots me through a wall?” 

The Supervisor tilted his head to one side before shaking it and smiling a small flat smile. “Something like that. I suggest you behave yourself, Mr. Woodward.”

The Woodward-Asset pushed past them, shaking their head again as they shot Cisco an angry look that made him flinch back in fear. He was sorry he was just following the Supervisor’s Orders, he had just been trying to be good, he had been trying, really he had been. He’d been trying to be good, all that he had done was follow the Supervisor’s Orders, please, please.

The Supervisor steepled his fingers and watched the Woodward-Asset leave with one eyebrow lifted and a strange expression on his face. “Come on, Carlos. Let’s go upstairs.” The lights suddenly flickered, the small but powerful ones inside of the cell turning on. The Supervisor smiled a little. “Hartley must’ve turned the generator on.”

Cisco swallowed. Was he supposed to nod? Agree? He did so just in case, making a small sound at the back of his throat and bobbing his head.

“Mr. Woodward should buy us some time,” the Supervisor remarked, wheeling out of the hallway and toward the elevator. “Come on. We need to get upstairs.”

* * *

“I can’t believe he’s dead,” Barry said numbly, looking at his fingers.

“Dr. Wells?” Hartley asked, voice low and eyes narrowed down behind his glasses. Barry couldn’t read his tone, but it sounded… Angry? “He’s dead?”

“No, no, not Wells, I-I don’t-” Barry shook his head. “Tony. Tony Woodward, he’s dead.”

“He must’ve gotten out of the Pipeline when the blackout hit,” Caitlin mused, sliding a needle under Barry’s skin. He didn’t want to question where she’d gotten it. “And then… Gibran killed him.”

“He couldn’t have gotten out when the blackout hit, those cells were modified to withstand one,” Hartley argued. “Someone must’ve let him out.”

“I did,” Wells said, moving into the room with the boy following behind him, head down and trying to take deep calming breaths. “Or, more accurately, Carlos did, but he was under my instructions. I take full responsibility for releasing him.”

Barry jumped to his feet, although he did wait until Caitlin pulled the needle out of his arms. “Wha-why?”

“To divert our intruder’s attention while we worked to restore your speed,” Wells said calmly. Beside him, Cisco whimpered, making himself small. No, no, no, Barry was  _ talking back,  _ talking back was  _ not allowed,  _ especially not to a Supervisor when Barry was already helpless.

Barry blinked, gaping at Wells. Hartley and Caitlin looked back and forth between them, Caitlin with a worried and confused expression on her face while Hartley looked a bit more calculating. “You-you used him as a distraction?”

“An unnecessary one as it turned out,” Wells sighed, shaking his head a little, “since it seems like the plan failed.”

Cisco took a few small steps backwards. He  _ knew  _ that this was going to end badly, Barry looked like he was about to talk back to the Supervisor and he wouldn’t be able to try to run away without his powers. He would be helpless against the Supervisor, helpless against Doctor Caitlin and Handler Rathaway. And Cisco didn’t dare try to help him. That would just mean that he would be punished too. Assets had to protect each other, but… Cisco  _ couldn’t  _ fight back against a Supervisor. He just couldn’t.

“I-I have his blood on me,” Barry whispered, shaking his head as he stared at the Supervisor. “How-how could you do that?”

“You’re showing a lot of sentiment for a man who tormented you as a child.” The Supervisor folded his hands in his lap and Cisco made a small sound of fear. The Supervisor was  _ angry  _ he was  _ angry  _ and now he would hurt Barry, he would punish him. But-what was he talking about? Did he mean that the Woodward-Asset had once been a Handler, someone who hurt Barry was he was little and tried to teach him to be a good Asset (even though it obviously hadn’t stuck)?

“Tony might’ve been a bully but he didn’t deserve to  _ die,”  _ Barry hissed, drawing himself up. Cisco pressed his back against the wall, eyes wide. No, no, no, please, please don’t hurt Barry, please don’t hurt Barry, he didn’t know any better, and he couldn’t heal if they decided to punish him because he didn’t have his powers.

“Does Caitlin?” Wells growled. “Or Hartley? Or me, or you, or Carlos? I needed to make a choice-us or him, and I chose us without a second thought.”

Doctor Caitlin took a little step closer to Cisco. “Dr. Wells,” she said softly, giving the Supervisor a hard look, “you’re scaring him. Look, he’s shaking.”

Barry plowed on, shaking in place-was he  _ vibrating?  _ Now that Cisco focused, he could tell that something had changed about Barry’s heart. It wasn’t the same as it had been before, humming and buzzing like wings, but it wasn’t slow and steady like a non-Asset’s, either. “All your talk about  _ miracle cures  _ and  _ scientific breakthroughs,”  _ Barry spat, “but you don’t care about  _ people  _ at all, do you?”

“Maybe you care too much.” The Supervisor sounded angry and Cisco tried not to cry. No, no, this might have been his one chance to say goodbye to Barry and he was ruining it by acting weak and by crying. Crying was not allowed. Crying was never allowed. “I know being a hero is important to you and I respect your ideals but I do not have the luxury of sharing them.”

“I forgot,” Barry said softly, and Cisco prayed that this meant that he had remembered that what he was doing was bad and wrong and Disobedient and oh so punishable. “Your game’s chess. We’re all just  _ pawns  _ to you, right? So what’s your move,  _ doctor?  _ Which one of us gets sacrificed next? Carlos? Caitlin? Hartley? Me?”

“Barry,” Doctor Caitlin snapped, and Cisco jumped. “Look at Carlos!”

Barry did so, fingers twitching with anger that melted away as soon as he saw how hard the boy was shaking, eyes wide and staring at him as a few small tears ran down his cheeks. Immediately, he dropped his shoulders and moved over to kneel down in front of him, wrapping him up in a hug. “Hey, I didn’t mean to scare you. It’s okay, you’re okay. Everything’s fine, I promise. It’s going to be okay. I won’t let anybody hurt you.”

“You-you talked back,” Cisco whimpered. “You talked back and that’s not  _ allowed,  _ you can’t talk back to a  _ Supervisor,  _ you can’t, you just can’t, please-”

“It’s okay,” Barry comforted. “You’re not going to be hurt. Wells won’t hurt me or you, alright? I’m gonna keep you safe, I promise. You’re going to be okay.”

The lights flickered and the Supervisor narrowed his eyes at Barry’s back, something that only Cisco saw. “We need to get out of the facility.”

“Gibran was on D-level when we got away from him,” Doctor Caitlin said as Handler Rathaway pulled out his phone and checked something. “We’ll never make it to the main entrance from here.”

“What about the garage?” Handler Rathaway frowned a little and pushed his glasses up on his nose. “The mobile lab van? There’s enough room in there for all of us to fit.”

“It’s my move,” the Supervisor said coldly, looking at Barry, “and I say we make a run for it.”

Handler Rathaway suddenly jumped. “Oh my god-Caitlin, I got the results from Barry’s blood test that you sent me. The one that you just did. Barry, look at this. Your cells are rapidly regenerating.” He showed Barry whatever was on his phone. “Just like they did before Gibran took your powers.”

One of Barry’s hands started to vibrate, and Cisco felt it tickling his back as Barry pulled away from the hug. He stared at it hopefully, eyes wide, before the vibration faded and he shook his head. “I still don’t have my speed. The thing with my hand-that’s all I can do.”

“It must be mental,” the Supervisor realized. “Not physical.”

Handler Rathaway looked at Doctor Caitlin, who sucked a breath in through her teeth. “Your cells weren’t regenerating before, so before it wasn’t mental-but the shock that we gave you must’ve worked. You just don’t  _ think  _ that you can do it, so you aren’t able to. And you’re not going to be able to until you have some sort of motivation.”

Cisco didn’t catch any of the next words as he stepped back even further, bumping into the wall and getting plunged into a vibe.

_ He couldn’t see anything. It was dark, too dark, and everything was shaking. He felt sick to his stomach, and he yelped as the ground shifted underneath his feet and sent him sprawling forward onto the ground. Cisco could feel the familiar tickle that meant a nosebleed was coming on and he whimpered, dapping at it with his sleeve even though he knew the blood wouldn’t be corporeal until he exited the vision. _

_ Something pressed hard against the back of his head, making it feel like his skull was squeezed in a vise, and Cisco tried to squirm away. This didn’t feel like any of the other visions that he had had, and he felt like he was going to throw up. When he snapped out of it he would surely be punished-he had vibed without permission  _ and  _ he hadn’t seen anything. That was worthy of punishment, especially since the Supervisor was already angry because of Barry’s Disobedient behavior. _

_ Something flashed across his vision and he jumped, letting out a tiny squeaking sound of fear that was mixed with a little bit of relief. Maybe this meant that he was going to see something after all? Maybe he wouldn’t be punished so severely? _

_ Laughter that seemed to be mixed with the sound of somebody crying rang in his ears and Cisco turned toward it, eyes wide and hopeful even as his head pounded even more. There had to be  _ something  _ that he could see to report back to the Supervisor and the Handler and the Doctor. There  _ had  _ to be. _

_ “Sorry,” someone murmured, and Cisco jumped as he realized that it was Doctor Caitlin’s voice. But he was still in the vision, so… It must’ve been a part of that. She couldn’t hurt him. She couldn’t hurt him. “I know you’re hurt, I’m sorry, I’m so insensitive, I can leave, here-” _

_ “It’s alright,” somebody else’s voice interrupted, and Cisco clapped his hands over his mouth. Bette, Bette, that was Bette. Was he-was he seeing what had happened before she was killed? Was he seeing what they had done to her before they handed her back to Eiling to be killed? “I understand. You just lost someone.” _

_ “It’s not like that,” Doctor Caitlin sighed, and Cisco wondered why she hadn’t hit Bette for talking out of turn. “Or-or it is, I just-” _

Cisco snapped out of the vibe with a jolt, blood starting to gush from his nose. The present-day Doctor Caitlin gasped and moved to kneel down in front of him, pulling something soft out of her pocket to dab at his nose, making concerned noises that sounded incredibly strange coming from a Doctor of all people. He flinched back with a whimper, expecting her to start questioning him about what he had seen in the vision and why he had used his powers without any permission.

The Doctor frowned a little, looking at him worriedly. “Are you okay, Carlos? Are you alright? What happened?”

“I-I’m sorry Doctor Caitlin,” Cisco whimpered. “I didn’t mean to use my powers without any permission, I did not mean to be bad, especially-especially not now, I know that I have been very, very bad and I am so so sorry, please, I won’t do it again, I won’t, I promise-”

“You’re not in trouble, it’s okay,” Doctor Caitlin said comfortingly, squeezing Cisco’s shoulder. “You can use your powers whenever you want here, alright? You just scared us when your nose started bleeding like that. Does that usually happen when you use your powers?”

“O-only sometimes, Ma’am,” Cisco mumbled-it was better to stick to calling her ‘Ma’am’ since he had already been very, very Disobedient and bad. He didn’t want to give her any other reasons to punish him or to take her anger out on Barry. “Not always.”

The blood had already stopped flowing from his nose, but Doctor Caitlin kept dabbing at his upper lip and nose with the soft thing anyways, oh so carefully. More careful than any other Doctor had ever been. They had either left it drying on his skin or roughly scrubbed it off despite his struggling and whimpering.

The Supervisor opened his mouth to say something, probably to Order the Doctor to be harder on him and hurt him even more, but before he could say anything the entire room shook. Handler Rathaway looked at Cisco, eyes widened slightly. “Did you-”

“No-no Sir,” Cisco answered quickly, shaking his head. He didn’t even care that he had interrupted a Handler, which he would surely be punished for. All he cared about was that Handler Rathaway was going to hurt him if he didn’t say that he hadn’t been the one to do it, that he hadn’t used his powers to make things move and shake without any permission from anybody. “I swear I didn’t, Handler Rathaway Sir.”

“Gibran,” the Supervisor said, looking at Barry, who clenched his fists and looked at the floor. Cisco was relieved that he was finally acting somewhat submissive-it might make his punishment a little bit lighter. “Let’s move.”

Barry hesitated and Cisco squeaked nervously. No, no, this wasn’t right, Barry  _ needed  _ to Obey the Supervisor’s Orders or else he would be punished. Much to Cisco’s relief, the other Asset let out a small sigh and nodded. “Fine.” He looked at Cisco. “Carlos, make sure you stay close to us, okay? I promise, we won’t let Gibran hurt you, but you need to stay near us so that we can protect you and make sure that nothing happens to you.”

Cisco sniffled. “O-okay. I-I’ll be good, I promise. I promise.”

Barry held out his hand. “Do you want to hold onto me?”

Nervously, Cisco looked at the Supervisor. Was this allowed? He didn’t understand what Barry was asking him to do, but he didn’t dare say anything until he knew that it was allowed. Handler Rathaway sighed. “Go ahead, Carlos. You don’t have to if you don’t want to, but it might be a good idea just in case something happens and we almost get separated.”

Slowly, Barry moved forward, telegraphing his movements and squeezing Cisco’s hand in his. He rubbed the back of it comfortingly with his thumb. “This is all I wanted to do. It’s okay. Just don’t let go of me, alright? Everything will be fine, I promise.”

* * *

Cisco pressed himself close to Barry, who was wincing each time he took a step, trying to make sure that he was safe. Technically he knew that it wasn’t his job to make sure that the Supervisor’s other Asset stayed safe (and more importantly, stayed Obedient and kept following Orders), but he had to. Barry thought that he was keeping Cisco safe, but really Cisco knew that it was the other way around. The Supervisor must’ve recognized that he was a much better trained Asset than Barry was, so he had decided to trust him with his older Asset’s safety.

It was weird, out of character for a Supervisor, and didn’t make any sense either way you looked at it, so Cisco just kept his head down, kept his hand firmly in Barry’s grip, and didn’t stop running.

“Second van,” Handler Rathaway called. “The keys are inside.”

Barry pulled the door of the van open, tugging Cisco up into it with him as he fumbled with the keys. “Get in, come on!” He yelled, signalling for the Handler, the Doctor, and the Supervisor to follow his lead. Cisco knew that he was going to be in trouble for Ordering them around. He curled up beside Barry in between the passenger seat and the driver’s seat, trying to block out the memories of transport vans and hoping that Barry wouldn’t be punished. “C’mon!”

The engine spluttered, too loud in Cisco’s ears, and Barry slammed his hands down on the steering wheel. “I-it’s not working!”

“Wells’ chair isn’t moving either,” Doctor Caitlin said, narrowing her eyes and looking at them from where she was standing, three quarters of the way to the van.

Something loud and angry buzzed in Cisco’s ears, making his teeth chatter, just as the Supervisor announced, “He’s here.”

Barry jumped and scrambled out of the car, pulling Cisco with him. Cisco whimpered, trying to stop Barry from rushing to the Supervisor’s aid-it would be  _ bad  _ if he Disobeyed Orders at all, even if it was to protect the Supervisor, on top of everything else wrong that he had done.

There was a crackling hum of electricity, and Cisco yelped as Barry was torn away from him by an arcing bolt of lightning. Cisco ducked on instinct, hiding down underneath one of the vans, flat on his stomach and shaking all over as Barry lay on the ground, groaning in pain.

Doctor Caitlin ran to his side, touching his shoulder gently. “Oh my god, are you okay?” Handler Rathaway appeared on Barry’s other side, helping the Doctor move him into a sitting position. “Thanks, Hartley. Where did he hit you?”

“I don’t-I don’t know. Chest, I think, that hurts the most, but-I-I’m okay.” It didn’t sound convincing, and Doctor Caitlin made a concerned noise as she moved to press her hands down on a singed spot of Barry’s shirt.

Cisco whimpered and pressed himself closer down to the floor of the lab, whimpering softly. “Please, please, please…” This wasn’t right, this wasn’t right, didn’t this rogue Asset know better? Didn’t they know better than to do something like this? “Please, please-”

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Handler Rathaway and Doctor Caitlin pressing close to Barry’s sides, almost… Protective. But that wasn’t right, that couldn’t have been right, none of this was right. None of this was right. This wasn’t right. Almost in slow motion, he watched from his hiding place as the rogue Asset raised a hand that was snapping and glowing with electricity.

“No, no, god, please-” Doctor Caitlin whispered, and Cisco saw Handler Rathaway reach across Barry’s chest and grab her free hand, squeezing it until his knuckles turned white. Barry cringed, and with a sudden sickening certainty Cisco realized that his friend (friend, just like Bette had been his friend) was about to be killed right in front of him.

Slithering out from underneath the car, Cisco sped forward before skidding to a halt in front of the other Asset, hands held out in front of him with energy bubbling at his palms. The rogue Asset stopped, looking at him with narrowed eyes. “You’re like me. And like him.”

Cisco swallowed. This was wrong. This was wrong. This was wrong. This was punishable and wrong and bad and it was against every Order that had ever been given to him but-“We’re not like you. You-you are a  _ bad Asset.  _ You are bad."

“Carlos,” Doctor Caitlin whispered, “Carlos, get back here, it’s okay, just stay behind us.” She looked at Gibran pleadingly. “He’s just a kid, he’s just a little kid, he doesn’t know what he’s doing. He’s been hurt, he’s not-please, he doesn’t work for STAR Labs, you can’t kill him, please-”

“I need to feed,” the rogue Asset growled, and Cisco took that as his opportunity to smash a set of vibrational blasts right into his chest, hard enough to send him tumbling backwards. He scrambled back as the other Asset groaned weakly from the floor, whimpering as tears filled his eyes, all of the bravery leaving him in a rush.

He tripped over Barry’s feet and fell right into his lap, whimpering a little. “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry-”

Doctor Caitlin stroked his hair, running her fingers through it gently. “It’s okay, it’s okay, I won’t let him hurt you, I promise. It’s okay, Carlos, it’s okay. You’re safe, you’re safe, I’m going to keep you safe. I promise, everything is going to be just fine. I’m going to keep you safe.” She looked at Barry and Handler Rathaway, lowering her voice down to a whisper. “Help me?”

Barry wrapped his arms around Cisco, holding onto him tightly. “It’s okay. I-I don’t know-”

There was a groan from across the garage, and all four of them turned to see that Gibran was slowly standing up, hissing in pain. Barry squeezed Cisco tighter before bundling him back behind him, using his body as a shield.

_ “Hey!”  _

Cisco’s entire body stiffened and he trembled all over. He  _ knew  _ that tone, he knew that tone, that was the Angry Supervisor Tone. It was something that had been directed at him more times than he could count, whenever he did something wrong, and Cisco couldn’t help but let out a tiny little whimper as he made himself small. If the Supervisor was using  _ that tone,  _ it could only mean bad things for him, for Barry, for the rogue Asset, and for any other Assets that the Supervisor had now that the Woodward-Asset was dead.

The rogue Asset turned around to look at the Supervisor, hands crackling with sparks.

“You’re here for me,” the Supervisor said firmly, and it took everything in Cisco’s power not to run to his side and defend him. 

“Finally, you show your face,” the rogue Asset murmured.

“Well, I wasn’t exactly eager to be killed,” the Supervisor, Supervisor Wells he had said to call him, said, narrowing his eyes and tilting his head.

Cisco peeped out from behind Barry as the rogue Asset spoke again. “Neither were my friends.”

“I know.” Supervisor Wells shook his head. “I hurt a lot of people that night.”

“People?” The Asset spat. “You don’t even know their names!”

“Jake Davenport,” Supervisor Wells began, and with a start Cisco realized that he must have been naming the names of all of the Assets he had ever owned, ever killed. He shuddered and braced himself for the list. “Darya Kim, Ralph Dibney, Al Rothstein, Grant Emerson, Will Everett, Bea de Costa, Ronnie Raymond. I know the names of every single person who died that night because of me. They mattered. And the fact that the world is now deprived of their potential is something that I have to live with every day.”

Cisco swallowed thickly, face pale. That was so many Assets… So many more than he had ever heard of Eiling having…

“But these people,” Supervisor Wells continued, “these people have done nothing wrong. You want to punish me? Fine. Let’s do that. But let these people live.”

“You died that night too,” the rogue Asset growled. Lightning arced out of his hands and slammed into the Supervisor, sending them tumbling out of their chair and causing Cisco’s heart to leap into his throat. Vaguely, he could still hear voices, still hear heartbeats and the snapping of electricity, but all he could focus on was the fact that this Asset had  _ attacked  _ a  _ Supervisor. _

There was a whoosh of air beside him, and then Barry was gone. Cisco hardly had time to gasp before the Supervisor was suddenly in Barry’s place, arms wrapped around Doctor Caitlin’s shoulders with Handler Rathaway supporting him on the other side. Cisco trembled. Surely Barry wouldn’t be punished for that, right? He had saved the Supervisor from the angry Asset, that must’ve been one of the extreme circumstances in which moving and using your powers without express permission was allowed and tolerable.

Then Barry was gone again, returning dressed in his red Asset-suit, standing proudly in front of the rogue Asset. His heartbeat hummed, and Cisco realized that he was no longer defective. He almost cried with relief-Barry would be punished, of course he would be punished, but he wouldn’t be disposed of for being a defective Asset.

He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and let his powers flow down into the earth. His eyes flickered behind his eyelids, and Cisco hoped that the light didn’t shine through. He was Disobeying and being very, very, very bad, but… He had to help Barry. If the rogue Asset killed him…

But before Cisco could do anything to help, there was a long, drawn-out scream, and one of the heartbeats that he could hear stopped beating. Even though Cisco could still hear Barry’s lightning-fast hummingbird one, he still opened his eyes fearing for the worst.

The rogue Asset was lying on the floor, Barry standing over his body with his head bowed. He looked at Supervisor Wells, Doctor Caitlin, Handler Rathaway, and Cisco for a long moment before his eyes went wide and he whispered a single word.

_ “Iris,”  _ he breathed, vanishing in a whoosh of lightning.

* * *

Cisco sat on his cot, knees hugged to his chest. He wasn’t tired, and besides he didn’t exactly have permission to sleep. The Rules must’ve changed after Barry fought the other Asset, right? They had to have changed.

He picked at his sleeve. Doctor Caitlin had given him a check up, and taken a little bit more of his blood in the process. She’d also bandaged his bloody hands, which had been nice-he’d assumed that after the skin on them had split she would’ve poked around in them for awhile just to test his reaction and to see what his vibrational blasts had done to them.

“Hey,” someone said softly, and Cisco looked up with a small flinch. The dampeners were working better than he had expected, and he hadn’t even heard the person’s heartbeat while they approached. The maybe-Enforcer, Joe, was standing just outside of his cell, smiling at him gently. “Do you remember me, kiddo?”

Cisco nodded hesitantly, and Joe smiled wider before reaching out and tapping a few buttons, opening the door to Cisco’s cell. He cowered back, eyes wide, and Joe moved his hands so that they were partially hidden behind his back. Cisco whimpered. “S-Sir, please-”

“It’s okay,” Joe said gently. “Can I come in?”

Cisco knew it wasn’t really a question, so he nodded slowly. “Yes, Sir.”

Joe took a few small steps forward until he was standing just barely in the cell. “Carlos, how would you feel about going somewhere else? About not staying at STAR Labs anymore? I promise, no matter what you answer, I’m not going to hurt you. You can tell me the truth. But I think it would be better for you if you came back to my house with me for a little while. What do you think about that?”

Cisco sniffled. It wasn’t like he had a choice, there was never a choice. The only times that there were choices were when it was between two bad things, between two punishments or two tests, and they never listened anyways even if he chose one. He had no choice but to go along with what Joe was saying. He didn’t have a choice. “Y-yes, Sir. I will go with you, Sir.”

Joe sighed. “You don’t have to call me ‘Sir’, remember? You can just call me Joe. And I know you’re scared but you really do have a choice. If you don’t want to come back home with me, you don’t have to. But I think that it would be better for you to be away from the lab for a little while, alright? If you really want to stay here you can, but I have room for you at my house.”

Cisco made a tiny sound. Joe may have said that he had a choice, but he knew better. He knew the truth. “Wh-what does Supervisor Wells think?”

Joe frowned a little at the title before shaking his head and deciding to let it slide. “After what happened with Gibran, everyone thinks it would be a good idea for you to stay somewhere other than STAR Labs. Nobody wants to run the risk of you getting hurt by a dangerous metahuman.”

“But-” Cisco flinched. No, no, that was  _ backtalk,  _ he knew better than to talk back. “Yes, Joe Sir. I understand.” He swallowed. “Am I going to be transferred now, Sir?”

“The day after tomorrow at the soonest,” Joe said. “I promise. We just have to get everything set up for you. I’ve already started, but there’s still quite a bit more to go. Do you think you’ll be okay staying here at STAR for one more night? You can be honest, it’s okay.”

“I will be fine, Sir. I promise that I will be fine staying here in my cell.” Cisco nodded fast, eyes wide. He knew the right answer to that question. Of course he did. He was a good Asset, a good boy, good and Obedient. He could show Joe that he was good. “I will be good, I promise.”

“You don’t have to be good,” Joe sighed, “not the way that they said that you had to. I promise, you’re going to be safe from now on. I’m going to protect you, I promise. It’s okay.”

“Yes Sir.” Cisco stayed perfectly still, shaking a little bit. He was going to be transferred to a different facility. He was going to be transferred and then they would hurt him and it would be scary but-but Joe was going to be the New Supervisor. That would be okay. He didn’t think that Joe would punish him for no reason, so he wouldn’t give him a reason. He would show him that he could be obedient, that he could be good, that he was on his best behavior. And then there would be no reason for Joe to punish him. “I understand Sir.”

“You don’t have to understand,” Joe said gently. “It’s okay for you to be confused. This is all very new for you, I know it is, and I understand that you must be scared of us. But the people who hurt you before can’t hurt you anymore, not ever again. I promise.” He hesitated. “Carlos, do you think that you could tell me who hurt you before? So I can make sure they never come near you ever again? I’m with the police, and if you tell me who it was that hurt you I can make sure that they go to prison for a long, long time.”

Cisco swallowed thickly and whimpered. He couldn’t. He couldn’t. He couldn’t. Eiling would be so, so mad at him if he told anybody, Eiling would be mad and then he would find Cisco and he would hurt him and punish him for being Disobedient and then he would catch Barry and hurt him too, and it would be bad, it would be so, so, so bad. So Cisco couldn’t tell them. He couldn’t tell them. He couldn’t. He couldn’t. He  _ couldn’t.  _ “‘M sorry, Sir,” Cisco whispered. “‘M sorry, I can’t, I can’t, he’ll be mad, I can’t.”

“Alright.” Joe knelt down until he was at Cisco’s level, although he didn’t come any closer. “No matter who it is, I won’t let them hurt you again. I promise.”

“Th-thank you, Sir,” Cisco mumbled. “Thank you, thank you, I promise I’ll be good, I’ll be a good Asset, I promise. I will be so good and you’ll never have to sell me, never, I promise.”

“I’ll never sell you,” Joe said firmly. “Ever. That’s called human trafficking, Carlos, and it’s very wrong and very illegal. I won’t sell you. I promise.” He took a deep breath and changed the subject. “Is there anything you want for your room at my house? Anything you like?”

Cisco blinked. “I-I don’t understand, Sir.”

Joe changed the question slightly. “If you could have anything you wanted in the whole world, what would it be? Anything at all. You won’t get in trouble no matter what you say, okay? You can answer honestly.”

Cisco thought for a long moment before bowing his head and hugging his shoulders tightly. He let out a tiny sniffle. “Bette. I want Bette, Sir.”

“Oh, kiddo…” Joe wanted to reach out and give the poor kid a hug. “Bette’s gone. I know you two were close, but she’s gone. I know it hurts, it’s going to hurt for a long time, but she’s gone. I’m sorry.”

“I-I know,” Cisco whispered. He rubbed his eyes with his hand and tried to keep the tears back. “I know, I know, I promise I know. But I miss her, I miss her, I miss her s-so m-much-” He let out a tiny sob. “I m-miss her.”

Joe took a deep breath. “Carlos, would it be okay if I came closer and touched you? I promise I won’t hurt you, I promise, but I want to help you. Can I give you a hug? Would that be okay?”

“I-I-I-” Cisco chewed his lip until he tasted blood. He knew that he didn’t have a choice. “Yes, Sir.”

Joe carefully moved forward and wrapped his arms around Cisco, pulling him into a huge, firm hug. Cisco sniffled against his chest. Why wasn’t he hurting him? Why wasn’t he beating him? This didn’t make any sense, it didn’t make any sense at all. It was like what Bette and Barry had done to reassure him-wrap their arms around him and hold him tightly and whisper that it was okay, it was okay, everything was okay now.

It was strange and he didn’t understand it. Joe wasn’t an Asset, why was he being gentle, why wasn’t he hurting him. It didn’t make sense, it didn’t make any sense at all.

“Was that okay?” Joe asked, pulling back.

Cisco shrugged a tiny bit. “I-I don’t know, Sir, I’m sorry, ‘m so sorry-” He couldn’t  _ lie  _ and say that it was or wasn’t okay, that would be so wrong, but not knowing was just as wrong and bad… “‘M sorry Sir.”

“It’s okay. It’s alright to be confused, you don’t have to apologize for it.” Joe squeezed Cisco’s shoulder gently. “It’s okay. You’re safe now, I promise.”

* * *

Iris inspected the price tag on the shirt she was holding before putting in the shopping cart. Usually she didn’t shop in the kids section, but she wanted to make sure that everything was prepared for the new foster kid her dad was taking in, and that included getting clothes in their size. She hoped that they’d like the the ones that she picked out-she hadn’t met them yet, but from what her dad had told her ‘Carlos’ was skittish and had come from an incredibly abusive environment, so he’d probably be grateful for any of the things that she picked out for him. Iris made sure to get a wide variety.

Hm. Barry had mentioned that he liked science, or at least he thought that he liked science, so he’d probably like dinosaurs, right? Unless he was a space kid. She got the dinosaur shirt just in case.

After she paid, Iris headed to the upstairs part of the mall, dragging her plastic bags of (expensive) clothes behind her. She was hungry, and despite how much loyalty she was supposed to have to Jitters, sometimes you couldn’t eat the same twenty or so pastries and coffees. You just  _ couldn’t. _

Sitting down at one of the food court tables with a snack, she sent a quick text to her dad that she was going to take a little longer than expected, but she’d gotten plenty of clothes that should fit the kid. And if they were too big, that was fine-he’d grow into them.

There was a shout from next to her, and before Iris could turn to see who it was someone ended up half on top of her and partially in her lap. Iris yelped in surprise and shoved the person off of her, sending them tumbling to the floor as they banged their knee on the table.

“Ow,” they groaned, papers all over the floor around them. They had slipped on a small splash of spilled strawberry smoothie, which luckily hadn’t gotten on any of their papers, which seemed to be about…

Iris made a small surprised coughing sound as she picked up one that had landed on her fries. “Kidnapped kids?”

The paper was snatched out of her hands.  _ “Solved  _ kidnapping cases,” they mumbled, kneeling back down and fumbling for the rest of their papers. “It’s not like I’m going to go out and kidnap someone.”

They sounded semi-genuine, which was… Good… But that didn’t necessarily make Iris feel any better. “Weird hobby.”

“Yeah.” They looked down at their papers and made a frustrated sound. “Now they’re all messed up. They’re supposed to be arranged.”

“Uh, this might be a weird question,” Iris said cautiously, “but why are you looking at reports on how kidnappings were solved in a public mall?”

“I can’t do it at home,” they replied with a small shrug. “My parents don’t like it, but-I have to. I swear I’m not going to kidnap anybody, I just…” They started backing away. “I promise I’m not going to kidnap anyone. I just need to… I need to keep looking for stuff, okay? Sorry for tripping over you!”

They ran off, disorganized papers clutched to their chest, and Iris looked at the few small slips of paper that they had left behind in total bewilderment. She picked them up and read them (they were about a little girl who had disappeared roughly ten years ago and had been found six months afterwards, starving and half dead but alive) before recycling them. Hopefully they wouldn’t miss them too much.

And hopefully they weren’t planning a kidnapping. Not every weird person was, but… Iris made a silent promise to herself to keep an eye out for their face in the news just in case.

* * *

“You’re sure he’s ready for this?” Barry asked skeptically, looking at Joe. “He’s still jumping at his own shadow. Is he up for coming to stay with you?”

“It’ll be better in the long run for him to be able to recover at an environment that’s hopefully similar to the one that he grew up on,” Joe said with a small shrug. “And once we find his family, if they’re even still alive, it’ll be good for him to have already been living in a house instead of at a  _ lab  _ that constantly reminds him of the people who hurt him.”

Barry winced. “That’s true.” He bit his lip. “What are we going to tell Iris? The kid can’t control his powers, what if he uses them in front of her? What if he tells her I’m the Flash? It’d be better if I just came out and told her now instead of her finding out from him.”

“Bar, no,” Joe said firmly. “I’ll talk to the kid. If she finds out that he’s a metahuman, it won’t be the end of the world, but she cannot find out that you’re the Flash. She already knows about metahumans, the worst case scenario if she finds out about Carlos would be her getting angry and calling me to demand to know if I knew. But if she finds out that you’re the Flash…”

Barry’s shoulders slumped. “I really want to tell her, Joe. She deserves to know.”

“Barry, enough. I know you want to tell her, I would be lying if I said that I didn’t want to tell her too, but she’s already in enough danger as it is. She can’t find out who you are under that mask.” Joe frowned.

Barry sighed and gave in. “Fine. Do you need any help moving Carlos to your place?”

Joe quirked an eyebrow. “This wouldn’t have anything to do with the stack of paperwork that’s on your desk at work, would it?”

“...Maybe a little. C’mon, I can get that done in thirty seconds now, let me help,” Barry said hopefully. “He trusts me. I know it’s just because he thinks we’re both ‘assets’, but still. He trusts me. I can help you.”

Joe relented. “I already have his room set up-it’s your old one, so you know where it is. Do you think you could move any of the hoarded food that he still has to my kitchen? It’ll probably make him feel better to know that there’s something familiar, even if it is just a bunch of snacks that he was trying to save for later.”

Barry nodded and looked at the security footage for Carlos’s cell. The kid was sitting at the back, knees to his chest with his head tucked down in between them. Barry could just barely see that his shoulders were shaking, and he was pretty sure that if he had turned on the sound for the cell he would’ve been able to hear him making small scared sounds. Barry swallowed, a little too thick in his throat. “How could somebody do this to a  _ kid?” _

“I’ve seen a lot of messed up things,” Joe sighed, “including some things that I never want to see again. I used to come home and watch you and Iris sleep and promise myself that I would never let those kinds of things happen to either of you. But this… What’s been done to this kid… I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

“We have to find out who did this,” Barry growled. “I don’t care how, we need to find out who hurt him. If it was the same people who hurt Bette, if she rescued him from somebody else, I don’t care who it was, but we need to  _ find them  _ and make them  _ pay.” _

Joe nodded, eyes hard. “I know.”

“What if there are other kids? Carlos said he was-he was  _ Asset 005,  _ that-that could mean that there are more of them, more people that’ve been hurt like he has,” Barry said anxiously. “We have to find them, we have to stop more kids from being hurt.”

“Easy, Barry. We still don’t know if there was anybody else.” Joe didn’t say that there likely would be others. “We’ll ask the kid as soon as he’s a little bit more comfortable. We can’t risk spooking him when he’s already so fragile. Whoever hurt him made him think that he can’t trust anybody, we have to show him that he’s safe here before we start asking him about the people who hurt him. Small questions for now, big questions when he won’t break down the minute we ask him.”

Barry’s shoulders slumped. “Okay. Should we get started with moving him?”

Joe nodded and looked at the feed again. The boy still hadn’t moved, instead staying curled up in the corner. Poor kid. Joe made a silent promise to himself to protect him. The things that had been done to him… Nobody deserved that. Especially not an innocent little kid.

* * *

Cisco took a deep breath and hugged his knees even tighter to his chest. The seatbelt was too tight over his chest and he whimpered as he tugged on it, making a small scared sound as Barry reached back and set a hand on his hand.

“Don’t do that, okay?” Barry said softly. “It’s there for your own safety, okay? Joe’s a great driver, but you still have to wear a seatbelt, alright?”

Cisco nodded and bowed his head, shaking slightly all over. He didn’t know were they were going, all he knew was that Joe and Barry had told him that they were going to his new temporary home. Joe told him that it was safe, told him that it was just what he had said before about moving in with him for the time being. 

That didn’t stop the fear.

Cisco knew that Barry was just here in case Cisco tried to run-Barry would catch him and bring him back to the Supervisor or back to Joe. He was probably also there to guard the master, Cisco realized. That was why Barry wasn’t chained up in the back of a van of some kind. He had to guard Joe and make sure that Cisco didn’t attack him, make sure that no rogue Asset tried to kill him, and make sure that Joe stayed safe.

“We’re almost there,” Barry promised, smiling a little at Cisco. “It’s okay. You’re gonna meet Iris, she’s great, and she won’t ever hurt you, alright? I think she said she was going to make something to welcome you, and it’ll probably be brownies. Do you like brownies?”

Barry was well aware that he was just babbling now, but it soothed Cisco for a few moments before he realized that Barry was  _ talking without permission,  _ blatantly flaunting the Rules in front of a master. Maybe it was because Joe was more lenient than Supervisor Wells was? But surely Joe would  _ tell  _ the Supervisor that Barry had been a bad Asset, surely he would tell him and then Barry would get in trouble and it would be bad and scary and-

The car stopped, pulling up outside of a house with a neat lawn and small bushes up against the sides of it. Barry hopped out and opened the door for Cisco, smiling widely at him. “We’re here.”

Cisco took a deep breath and closed his eyes, waiting to be given permission to exit the transport car and stand at attention in front of the new facility. Joe frowned a little as he got out of the car and looked down at him. “C’mon, son, it’s okay. You’re safe. Come on out.”

Scrambling to Obey, Cisco jumped out of the car, eyes wide and scared as he bowed his head. Joe must have been expecting him to get out  _ without  _ him asking him to-he must have failed whatever test they were trying to run on him. No, no, no, that was bad, he was sorry, he was so, so sorry. He hadn’t meant to fail, really he hadn’t. He hadn’t meant to be bad or to do badly or-or-

“It’s okay,” Barry said, holding out his hand. “You’re safe. We’re not gonna hurt you, remember? It’s okay. You’re safe.”

Cisco hesitantly took his hand, causing Barry to beam at him. Cisco sniffled. “I-I-” He looked at Joe. “Wh-what am I supposed to do now, Sir?”

“I told you,” Joe sighed, “you don’t have to call me ‘Sir’. Joe is fine. And you don’t have to do anything. Just come inside with us and meet Iris, okay? Then I’ll show you your room and we’ll eat dinner. Would it make you feel better if Barry stayed for dinner?”

Cisco nodded shyly. He couldn’t  _ lie  _ and say ‘no’,  _ that  _ was against the Rules. He had to say yes and he had to be honest with the new master-was Joe the new Supervisor? Had Joe become the new Supervisor when he took him from the old facility and brought him to this new one? Had the Rules changed again? Cisco sniffled. There were so many questions, so many questions that he couldn’t ask because asking them would be Disobedient and oh so punishable.

“It’s okay,” Barry said gently. “Things are different here. Things are better now, I promise. You’re safe here, none of us are going to hurt you, I promise. Not me, not Joe, not Hartley and Caitlin and Wells. And I know you haven’t met her, but Iris won’t hurt you either. I promise. It’s okay. Just come into the house.”

Ducking his head, Cisco Obeyed, following Barry and Joe quickly up the path to the front door, trembling a little. The Rules must have changed  _ again,  _ he would have to wait until he was left alone with Barry to ask about how they had changed. Until then, Cisco just had to hope that he didn’t do anything bad that would get him in trouble with the new masters.

Joe opened the door, holding it for Cisco and Barry before looking into the house and calling, “Iris, we’re back.”

Cisco almost hid behind Barry before realizing that he would get in trouble and forced himself to stand with his hands tucked behind his back and his head bowed. He could hear footsteps coming closer and couldn’t stop himself from shaking, swallowing back whimpers. Iris must have been a new Handler, or maybe a new Doctor.

“Hey there,” someone said softly, and Cisco looked up through his eyelashes. A pretty woman was kneeling down in front of him, smiling a little. She held out a white paper napkin with something that smelled good on it, and Cisco couldn’t stop his stomach from rumbling. “My name’s Iris,” the woman said gently. “My dad said that your name is Carlos, is that right?”

Cisco chewed his lip and shrugged a little. He looked at Joe for direction, who nodded. Cisco took a shaky breath. “Yes Ma’am.”

The woman-Iris-winced. “You don’t have to call me ‘Ma’am’, it’s okay. You can just call me Iris, alright? I’m Joe’s daughter, I live here too.”

“Yes Ms. Iris,” Cisco whispered, looking back down at the floor. He knew he had to be respectful. “‘S nice to meet you, Ms Iris.”

“It’s nice to meet you too,” Iris said, holding out the hand with the napkin. “Do you want a brownie? I made them for you.”

Cisco hesitated and looked at the brownie, making a small whining sound at the back of his throat. “I-I-Ms. Iris, please, I-” He glanced at Joe out of the corner of his eye and wondered if this was some sort of bizarre test. But Joe’s face was even, even if his eyes were sympathetic. Cisco’s stomach grumbled and he made an impulse decision to take the risk. “Yes Ms. Iris, I would like to have it Ms. Iris.”

Iris forced a smile and pressed the napkin into his hand. “There you go. And you don’t have to call me ‘Miss’ or anything, just Iris is fine. You’re not going to get in trouble.”

Cisco looked down at the brownie and made a confused noise. It looked good, and it certainly  _ smelled  _ delicious… But did he have permission to eat it? He hoped he did. He was hungry, he was so hungry… But… But…

“Go on,” Barry encouraged. “Eat it, it’s good. Iris makes the best brownies.” He leaned down and stage whispered to Cisco, “It’s all she knows how to make from scratch that actually tastes good.”

Iris made a scandalized gasping noise and shoved Barry, making Cisco jump as his eyes filled with tears. No, no, no, no-

“Iris, don’t,” Joe warned as she advanced on Barry, hands on her hips. He dropped down to his knees in front of Cisco. “Carlos, it’s okay. Look at me, kiddo, it’s okay. Iris isn’t going to hurt Barry. She’s his friend, his best friend, it’s okay. She’s not gonna hurt Barry and she’s not gonna hurt you, either. It’s okay. You’re safe, Barry’s safe, we aren’t going to hurt you.”

Iris looked horrified, reaching up to cover her mouth with one hand. “I’m so, so sorry, I wasn’t thinking, I-it’s okay, don’t cry, it’s okay. Try some of the brownie.”

Sniffling and choking back tears, Cisco took a small bite of the brownie, eyes suddenly widening as he looked at it in shock. It was so  _ good.  _ It was sweet like the drink that Handler Rathaway had given him and like the things that he remembered eating Before even though he was trying not to remember and he wasn’t  _ supposed  _ to remember.

“Do you like it?” Barry asked, smiling at him tentatively.

Cisco nodded shyly, ducking his head and hiding behind his hair. He didn’t see Barry, Iris, and Joe exchanging looks over his head.

“C’mon,” Joe said softly, holding out his hand and standing up with a small wince as soon as Cisco took it. “We’re gonna give you the grand tour.”

Cisco took a small shaky breath and followed them deeper into the house, still clutching the brownie.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Beware the fury of a patient man."--John Dryden

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, so I know I said I was going to get the next chapter of Find Someone to Carry You up before I posted this new chapter, but it's hedgi's birthday! Go wish her a happy birthday!

Cisco ducked his head down into his shoulders, making sure that his head was bowed toward the floor so his superiors wouldn’t think that he was being willfully Disobedient. The Rules here would obviously be different, just like they had been different at the other facility with Supervisor Wells, but one thing would always stay the same-Handlers wanted Assets to be Obedient, they wanted Assets to be good, they wanted their Assets to be seen and not heard, and they  _ especially  _ wanted their Assets to follow their every Order.

The new Handler, Iris, kept shooting him worried glances as she gestured to different rooms and explained what they were. Cisco didn’t know why, although he was glad that she was taking the time to explain it. Everything at this facility was so  _ different  _ and so  _ confusing.  _ He hoped the punishments for accidentally breaking a few Rules wouldn’t be very harsh. Cisco hadn’t even had time to adjust to the new Rules at the other facility before Joe had brought him here.

Barry sent him a friendly smile. “Do you want to see your room before dinner’s ready?”

Cisco blinked and looked at Joe. He assumed that Barry had his permission to talk out of turn, but that didn’t mean that Cisco did. Answering the question of another Asset was basically the same thing as speaking without being spoken to, and that was  _ bad.  _ That was  _ wrong.  _ He needed permission to talk. He could show Joe that he was a good Asset, better than Barry at following the Rules without question.

When the silence stretched out for a little bit too long, Joe decided to break it. “We’ll show you your room and the bathroom and then you can get settled while I make dinner, okay? Does that sound good to you, Carlos?”

Cisco looked at the floor and nodded, grateful that Joe had answered before Cisco had had to respond incorrectly to Barry’s question, which would only lead to more punishment. “Yes Sir. I understand, Sir.”

Joe sighed. “You don’t have to understand. It’s okay. I understand that this must be very new and different for you, kiddo. The people who had you before hurt you very badly, didn’t they?”

Cisco swallowed nervously. “O-only when I deserved it, Sir. Or-or when it was time for a test.”

“You never deserved it,” Joe said firmly. “You’re a kid. No matter what you did, you didn’t deserve what those people did to you, alright?”

“It’s okay if you don’t get it yet,” Barry added softly. “We know you’re scared. It’s okay. You’re safe here, I promise. You’re safe. Nobody here is going to hurt you, not ever. It’s like-it’s going to be like-do you remember anything from before you got… Taken? Before those people started hurting you?” Iris gave him a confused look, and he mouthed  _ ‘later’  _ to her over Cisco’s head. “Do you remember any of that?”

Cisco tensed. No, no, no, he couldn’t remember stuff from Before, he  _ couldn’t,  _ that wasn’t allowed, that was never allowed, he couldn’t remember anything from Before-he couldn’t-

_ ( _ _ Cisco bounced along the sidewalk, skipping over the cracks as he counted them in his head. Behind him, Dante was doing the same thing, insisting on stepping only in the middle of each concrete square. Armando brought up the rear of their little train, lugging his heavy backpack and occasionally pausing to lift a soggy worm off of the sidewalk and put it back in the grass. Cisco kept up a steady stream of chatter with Dante, not bothering to include Armando. Today was one of the bad days when talking wasn’t going to happen because the bell was too loud and he couldn’t wear the right clothes. _

_“I talked to Lola today,” Dante announced proudly, planting his hands on his hips and letting them come out of his sleeves for the first time. They were cracked and dry, and Cisco made a face and a small sound of worry when he saw them. That didn’t look comfortable. Dante shook his head. “I’m fine,_ hermano, _just lost track of time.” He paused._ _“Don’t tell Mama, alright? She’ll get worried and she’s already got enough stuff to think about as it is, so don’t tell her. It’s a secret.”_

_ Cisco beamed, glad to be in on the secret. “Hear that, Armando?” He said, turning around and practicing walking backwards. He held a finger up to his lips. “It’s a secret!” _

_ Armando nodded solemnly, smiling at him and mirroring his ‘secret’ hand motion. Dante suddenly reached out, snagging the back of Cisco’s hoodie before he could step down on one of the cracks in the sidewalk. Cisco blinked at him, confused, and Dante let go. “Sorry, Paco. You know the saying, right?” _

_ Cisco huffed. “S’not  _ real,  _ though. That’s what Melinda says.” _

_ “Melinda just doesn’t want to scare you,” Dante said, eyes gleaming as he leaned towards Cisco and wiggled his fingers. “She doesn’t want you to think that it’s your fault if-” _

_ Armando suddenly rushed forwards and elbowed him, causing Dante to stumble, eyes wide as he barely managed to avoid stepping on one of the sidewalk cracks himself. Armando narrowed his eyes at him and pointed to Cisco, miming zipping his lips shut. Dante rolled his eyes and stuck his tongue out at his older brother. _

_ “Don’t worry,” Cisco said, pausing and waiting for Armando’s nod before bumping into him and pressing up against him with a huge smile on his face. “Dante doesn’t scare me. Not anymore. I’m not a baby.” _

_ Armando ruffled his hair and Dante rolled his eyes again. “Yeah, sure, being seven  _ totally  _ isn’t being a baby-” _ _ ) _

“What’s wrong?” Iris asked softly, kneeling down next to him so she was closer to his level. “Are you okay? We didn’t mean to scare you, we just want you to know that you’re safe here. My dad works with the police, he protects people, and Barry helps put bad guys away in prison so they can’t hurt anybody else. They’re not going to hurt you, Carlos, I promise. And I won’t  _ ever  _ hurt you. I want you to feel better. You’re safe.”

“Not allowed Ma’am, not allowed, I’m not allowed, I’m not allowed to remember anything from Before, I promise, I promise, I’ll be good, I won’t remember anything from Before, never again. I promise. I’ll be good, I’ll be good, I’ll be good,” Cisco babbled, trembling all over and shaking his head fast enough to make his hair flop in his face. “I promise, I promise, I’ll never remember anything from before ever again, never again. I promise.”

“Oh, kiddo,” Joe sighed. “It’s okay, it’s okay. You can remember things from before those people started hurting you. We  _ want  _ you to remember, alright? We want you to remember so we can help take you back to your family, okay? I promise, we want to help you, and the more you remember about before the faster we can take you back home.”

Cisco’s breathing started going fast. “No Sir, no Sir, I understand Sir, I will pass the test, Sir, I promise, I promise, I promise.”

“It’s not a test,” Barry said gently. “I promise, it’s not a test. You’re really safe here. It’s okay. It’s okay.”

Cisco swallowed down a whimper. Barry and Iris exchanged glances as Joe sighed. “Iris, can you show Carlos his room while Barry and I get dinner started?”

Iris nodded and smiled at Cisco, a little bit too stiff and forced. “C’mon, I’ll show you. I hope you like it.”

Cisco ducked his head and followed Iris, heart pounding. He was going to see his cell now, he was going to get chained up now, she was going to show him his new cell and he was going to like it or else. Who knew how Iris would punish him, but if she was even a little bit like the other masters before her, it was sure to be painful and she was sure to have a lot of different ways to make him hurt. To punish him.

Iris led him slowly up the stairs, letting Cisco follow Obediently behind her. He made a small nervous sound as they reached the top, wondering which door led to his new cell. Iris looked down at him over her shoulder with a small comforting smile. She gestured to one of the doors. “That used to be Barry’s old room, but it’s going to be yours now. Don’t worry, everything is all cleaned up and ready for you.”

Cisco bobbed his head. “Yes M-Ms. Iris.”

She gave him another smile and opened the door, letting him step inside. “Do you like it?”

Cisco turned slowly in a dazed circle on his heal, gaping around him at the room. It was  _ big,  _ bigger than any cell that he had ever had, even bigger than the cell at the other facility with Supervisor Wells. It was  _ huge- _ somehow, it reminded Cisco of Before, of sleeping in a warm bed with blankets wrapped around him while across the room he could hear soft snoring that was coming from-no. No. Bad Cisco, very bad, it was very bad to remember Before, and he had already done it once today.

But the room… The room was so big, it was just so big, and there was a  _ window  _ with a tree outside of it and there was a  _ bed  _ and-and it had  _ blankets  _ and  _ pillows  _ on it and he didn’t  _ understand,  _ he didn’t understand, why were they giving this to him-

Cisco’s eyes fell on a smaller door in the wall of the room that was partially open and realized.  _ That  _ must have been his cell. Not this big room that was fit for a Supervisor. That must have been his cell. He was oddly relieved. The big room may have been far more luxurious than he was used to, and probably far more comfortable than the cell, but a small cell was  _ familiar.  _ It was something he was used to. Something he could handle.

He walked quickly over to the door and sat down just inside of it, knees hugged to his chest as he waited for Iris to shut the door and leave him in darkness. Instead, she crouched down in front of him and tilted her head, clearly confused.

“What are you doing?” She asked softly. “That’s the closet.”

Cisco blinked at her. No, no, this was his cell, this was his new cell and it was the right size. Sort of. It was certainly much… Softer… Than he was used to, and Cisco automatically pressed back into the soft clothes hanging down from the top of the cell, but that didn’t mean that it wasn’t still a cell. His cell, now.

“Why don’t you come out of there and get on the bed,” Iris suggested. “It’s nice and comfortable. Lots of blankets and pillows for you.”

Cisco shook his head. This was a test, and he knew  _ exactly  _ how he was supposed to pass it. “No, no, no Ms. Iris, I promise, I know that I haven’t earned the blankets or the pillows, so I know that I’m not allowed to use them. I promise.”

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Okay. Would it make you feel better if I took some of them off the bed and put them away? You don’t have to earn anything here, not something like blankets and pillows, but I can understand that this must be very new and scary for you. Would it make you feel better if I put some of the blankets away, Carlos?”

Cisco blinked. “You-you can get rid of all of them, Ms. Iris. I will be good. I don’t need blankets or pillows or a bed, Ma’am. I promise I know how to be good.”

“I’m not going to take away all of the blankets,” Iris told him. “Just a few of them. So you don’t get too hot or two overwhelmed. But you get to keep most of them, alright? They’re yours now.”

Cisco trembled, shaking his head again and making his hair flop in his face. “But-” Backtalk. “I mean, yes Ma’am, understood Ma’am.”

She sighed deeply. “Okay. It’s okay. You don’t have to call me ‘Ma’am’ here, remember? It’s okay. You’re safe now. Everything is okay now. It’s okay if you slip up, you won’t get in trouble for it,” she added as Cisco flinched back on himself with a small whimper, “but you don’t have to call me ‘Ma’am’. Like I told you, just Iris is fine. It’s okay.”

He nodded quickly. “Understood M-Ms. Iris.”

She stood up. “Do you want to see the bathroom? I can show you later tonight if you want to rest before it’s time for dinner, but I think we should probably finish the tour now, right?”

Cisco swallowed thickly. “We-we can do whatever you want to do, Ms. Iris.” Before he could lose courage, he said in a rush, “Am I p-permitted to know what you will be having for dinner, Ms. Iris?”

“I want to do what you want,” Iris said gently. “And of course you can know what we’re all having for dinner. I think my dad is making spaghetti. Do you like spaghetti?”

As Iris watched, Cisco’s face scrunched up in confusion and he tilted his head to one side. “Wh-what is that, Ms. Iris? I don’t… I don’t understand. Why does it matter what I like?”

“It matters because we care about you. And spaghetti is a kind of noodle that’s long and thin. You can put cheese and butter and sauce on it if you want to. There’s bread for dipping,” Iris explained. “Dad will probably give you the plain stuff at first so you can decide what you want. Do you think that’ll be alright, Carlos? Or is that too overwhelming?”

He looked down at the floor. “You-you can pick my meals, Ms. Iris.”

Iris chewed her lip. “Well, that’s very nice of you, but I think it’ll taste better if you pick your own stuff out. Okay? I can help you, but I think it’ll be better if you choose for yourself.”

“Yes Ms. Iris.” Cisco ducked his head.

Iris forced a small smile. “C’mon, I’ll show you the bathroom. It’s just down the hall and you can use it whenever you want, alright? You don’t have to ask. Unless you’re at the table with us, then you should tell us so we know where you’re going.”

Cisco nodded solemnly, committing all of the new Rules to memory. He couldn’t afford to make any mistakes, he just  _ couldn’t.  _ He had to be good. Who knew how the new masters would react to his Disobedience?  _ Especially  _ if they knew that he already knew the Rules. Then he would have no excuse for being a bad and naughty and rude Asset.

Iris gestured for him to stand up and join her and Cisco Obeyed, tucking his hands behind his back as he waited nervously for further instruction. “The bathroom is this way.”

Cisco followed, head down but watching where he was going by looking up through his eyelashes. He wondered what the ‘bathroom’ was going to be like. Was it going to be like the toilet that folded down from the wall in his old cell that Supervisor Wells had put him in? Like the shower rooms at Eiling’s facility? Like the drain in the floor that he used to have in all of his cells before he and Bette had escaped and everything had been flipped upside-down?

Iris opened a door and Cisco peered inside. He made a small sound of confusion. This looked even more like a cell than his actual cell. As he stepped onto the tile floor, Cisco was suddenly reminded of Eiling’s facility-of the Doctor’s Room where they would cut him and measure his reactions and make him hurt all over and do all sorts of bad painful scans-

He forced himself not to think about that, trying to shove it to the back of his mind. If he panicked now, Ms. Iris would be angry, and then she would tell Joe, and then Cisco was going to be punished for being weak. So he couldn’t panic. Cisco wouldn’t panic.

Cisco looked around. There was a sink, fancier than the sharp metal loud ones that he was used to (it almost reminded him of the one from Before, but only barely because he wasn’t allowed to remember any more than that), a toilet similar to the one that folded out of the wall in the cell at Supervisor Wells’ facility only cleaner and nicer, and a white curtain hanging down from the top of what looked like a metal pole coming out of the wall close to the ceiling.

Sensing his confusion, Iris pulled the curtain back, revealing a large white tub. “It’s the shower curtain, see? There’s the bathtub.”

Cisco’s breath hitched. Oh, oh no, that was where he was going to get punished. That was where he was going to be held underwater and punished and  _ hurt,  _ that was where they were going to do awful, awful bad things to him. That was where they were going to pin him down and make him feel helpless and laugh cruelly as his lungs burned and he struggled to take in air.

Cisco looked up at Iris, eyes filling with tears. “P-please, Ma’-please, Ms. Iris, please, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, what did I do wrong, I promise I’ll do better, I’ll do it right next time, what did I do wrong, please-”

“Hey, no, no, you didn’t do anything wrong,” Iris said hastily, dropping down onto her knees so she was less threatening. Cisco quailed back. “It’s okay, you didn’t do anything wrong, I just wanted to show you where the bathtub was so you’d know. What’s wrong? You’re not in trouble, it’s okay, but-what did I say wrong?”

“Please, please don’t, I’ll do better, I’ll do better, I promise,” Cisco repeated, making himself look even smaller as he cowered against the wall before half ducking underneath the sink. Everything felt too hot, like his head was being squished, and he let out a tiny whimper as Iris stood up with a decisive expression on her face.

“Dad!” She called loudly, frowning a little as Cisco winced and flinched, hands clapping over his ears. “Can you come up here? I don’t know what to do.”

Cisco heard footsteps and braced himself as tears started sliding down his cheeks. He didn’t mean to, he didn’t mean to, now she had gone and called the Supervisor and Joe was going to be so, so mad, he was going to be mad and he was going to beat him or hold him down underwater in the tub that was right there. Or worse, he would hand him back over to Eiling, just like what had happened to Bette, and then Eiling would kill him. Eiling would kill him.

At least then Cisco would be with Bette. If he was dead, he’d be with Bette and no Supervisor or Handler or Doctor or Enforcer could ever hurt him again. He’d be with Bette and he’d be with his brother and he would be  _ safe,  _ finally safe.

Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad.

“What happened?” Joe asked as he burst into the room and looked around for Cisco until he spotted him, half under the sink and crying with his hands over his ears, visibly trembling as he fought for breath. Joe sighed. “Iris, go help Barry with the tomato sauce. I’ll see if I can calm Carlos down.”

Iris hesitated before turning around, smiling gently at Cisco as she left. “Don’t worry,” she murmured. “You’re safe now, I promise.”

Joe waited until Iris was gone before taking a small step forward. Cisco backed up even more. Joe was  _ huge  _ compared to him (so was Barry, but Barry was an Asset and therefore he was safe-ish), he was  _ big  _ and he was a master and now he was coming closer after Cisco had Disobeyed. That could only mean that he was going to punish him. That was what it had to mean.

“I’m not gonna hurt you, son,” Joe said softly. He turned his hands so Cisco could see them. “It’s okay. Take a deep breath, it’s alright. You’re safe. Can you tell me what’s wrong? I promise I won’t be mad at you. Just tell me what you’re scared of so I can try to make it better.”

“I-please, Sir, please, I promise I can do better. I promise I won’t Disobey.” Cisco shuddered, letting out a tiny squeak of fear.

“Okay. I believe you. I believe you. Just take a few more deep breaths and then try to tell me what’s wrong. Can you do that for me, kiddo?” Joe coaxed. He didn’t move any closer, something that Cisco was so, so grateful for.

Cisco swallowed and tried to take a few more breaths before forcing himself to look at the tub again. He’d been Ordered to, he had to, he had to. “I-I-I’m trying to be good, Sir, please do not use the tub on me, please do not use the tub on me. Please Sir. I am trying to be good, I promise.”

“Nobody is going to hurt you,” Joe promised, crouching down. “It’s okay. You’re safe here. Safe. Remember Bette? Remember how Bette kept you safe? We’re like that. We’re going to protect you. It’s okay.”

“Please, Sir,” Cisco begged. “I don’t want to-I don’t want to-please don’t-”

“We won’t. If it hurts you, I promise that we won’t ever do it to you. I’m here to protect you. Me, Barry, Iris, Caitlin, Hartley, Wells-we all just want what’s best for you. Okay? We’re going to keep you safe.” Joe moved back to give Cisco more room. “You’re safe here. Come on out from under there. Dinner’s almost ready, you can wait downstairs with us while we make it. Would that be okay with you?”

Cisco ducked out from under the sink. No other choice but to follow Joe’s Orders. No other choice but to follow Joe’s Orders. Not unless he  _ wanted  _ to be punished-which he didn’t, he didn’t, he never did. Never.

* * *

“Hey, Iris,” Barry greeted, stirring the tomato sauce with a wooden spoon. “Everything okay?”

Iris sighed and leaned over to snag a piece of already sliced bread, chewing on it thoughtfully. “I don’t know. There’s something… Off… About the kid. Carlos. He’s…” She shook her head. “I know he was hurt, badly, and I want to help him, and of course I understand why he’s scared of me, but it feels like there’s something… I don’t know.”

“He was abused, Iris. We still don’t know the extent,” Barry admitted. “C-I mean, the doctors think it was physical and psychological and emotional, and I guess we’re lucky there’s no evidence it was sexual, but… We don’t know how far it went, we don’t know most of what they did to him, hell, we don’t even know  _ who  _ did it to him.”

Iris frowned. “So it wasn’t a family member? I didn’t want to ask.”

“No-well, we don’t think so. It’s-it’s bad, Iris, it’s really bad. And, uh…” He swallowed. Oh, man, Joe was going to hate him for this, but… “And he has powers.”

Iris’s head snapped up.  _ “What?” _

Barry winced. “Yeah. We’re not really sure what their extent is yet, and he doesn’t either, so  _ please  _ don’t ask him about them. I just figured I’d give you a warning in case you saw him do something. All we know so far is that he can fire these weird, I don’t know, blasts out of his hands, and he gets visions.” He held up a hand to stall Iris’s next obvious question. “We don’t know what the visions are of, he says that they’re of ‘possibilities’, whatever that means.”

“‘We’? Who else knows about his powers?” Iris narrowed her eyes as if she were daring Barry to lie to her.

Barry sighed. “Me and your dad. And you, now.” He debated for a moment before deciding to tell her a half-truth. “And the people who helped me recover at STAR Labs. They have equipment that can help. Carlos doesn’t trust them at all, but at least it’s something. It’s easier for him to see Caitlin on her own-you remember Caitlin, right?-than to go to a crowded noisy hospital.”

“Why didn’t Dad tell me?” Iris ate another bite of her bread. It didn’t make any sense-why hadn’t Joe told her about this? Unless he was saving it for after dinner. But he’d had  _ plenty  _ of opportunities to tell her, and-wait a minute. “Powers. Like Tony’s powers, and like the Flash’s powers. Are there more people who have powers like that?”

Barry swallowed. God, Joe was absolutely going to kill him. “...Yeah. But we-me, your dad, and STAR Labs-are trying to keep it from the public, so you can’t tell anybody, okay? STAR is developing tech to stop them without killing them, and half of the police force doesn’t even suspect anything.”

“Does your boss know?” Iris’s eyes were huge.

“Yes,” Barry lied. Shit, he really  _ was  _ going to have to tell Singh at some point. Maybe Joe could help convince him that Barry wasn’t just making something up, that this was real, that he wasn’t lying, that this wasn’t just one of his unexplained phenomena. “It’s just-complicated. Things are really, really,  _ really  _ weird right now, Iris.”

“I can tell,” she muttered before hesitating. “Is-is that why he got hurt? Because of his, uh, powers?”

Barry looked down at the tomato sauce and gave it another few stirs before sighing. “Yeah. Yeah, we’re pretty sure it was. It’s what he told us happened, and he seems  _ way  _ too scared to even think about lying about it.”

They sat in silence for awhile, Iris reaching over Barry’s shoulder to stir the pasta in its pot of boiling water. Barry broke the silence by coughing awkwardly and leaning back away from his tomato sauce, turning down the stove underneath it.

“So, uh,” he began, rubbing the back of his neck as he changed the subject, “how’re things going with Eddie?”

Iris brightened a little, glad to be talking about something else. “Good, they’ve been really good. He keeps making excuses to come see me at work. I’m not even sure that he  _ likes  _ coffee. He looks like a latte person to me.”

Barry snorted. “And we all know how good you are at scoping out what a potential customer wants to drink, don’t we?”

She elbowed him playfully, and the two of them argued for awhile. It felt like old times, like before the lightning. Like Barry wasn’t weirdly distant and twitchy (well, twitchier than he had always been) around her. Like… Like things were normal.

The kid’s terrified face stayed burnt at the back of her mind. His tearstained cheeks, his wide eyes… He was  _ terrified  _ of her.

Iris promised herself that she was going to fix that.

* * *

Cisco hugged his shoulders as he tentatively followed Joe down the stairs. His whole body was shaking, teeth chattering as he just barely managed to hold back his tears. Joe had calmed him down in the bathroom, carefully making soothing noises and promising that nobody was going to hurt him, but Cisco was still terrified. Joe must’ve been lying-there wasn’t any other possible explanation. Of course, Cisco couldn’t  _ say  _ that he was lying, that was punishable, but… He knew it was true.

Barry looked up from where he was setting the table (that must have been a part of Barry’s Asset-ness; doing the work for everyone around the facility) and smiled. “Hey, buddy,” he greeted, and Cisco flinched. Barry was surely talking to him, he would  _ never  _ speak to a master in such an informal and Disobedient way, but he didn’t have any permission and Joe was  _ right there  _ watching them. “Feeling any better? Iris said you got scared.”

Cisco squeaked nervously and looked up at Joe, craning his neck back so he could judge his expression without actually looking him in the eye. Eye contact was a sign of rebellion, and rebellion was Disobedience, and Disobedience was punishable. Joe looked down and him and smiled gently before frowning a little when Cisco ducked his head away. “I think he’s feeling a little better now, but we still have to take things slow.”

Barry nodded. “Iris is putting everything on plates,” he informed them, although Cisco wasn’t sure which one of them he was talking to. And he didn’t still know why Barry was still talking without permission. It was just  _ wrong.  _ Wrong and bad and punishable. Barry nodded to Cisco. “Why don’t you sit down?”

He looked at Joe nervously. Was that proper permission? Was Barry allowed to give him permission here because he had been one of Joe’s Assets for longer than Cisco had been? Joe sighed and nodded to him, letting him have permission to talk. Cisco took a deep breath and nodded quickly. If Barry was an Asset of a higher ranking than he was, that meant that he had to respond with the same formality that he would use for any master. “Yes, Sir.”

Cisco sat down on the floor right where he was standing in the front room of the house, hugging his knees to his chest before shifting forward onto his knees and tucking his hands behind his back when he realized that he would be more exposed that way. More vulnerable. Just the way that the masters liked it.

Joe looked down at him. “Kiddo? What’s going on? Are you okay?” His voice was gentle. “We didn’t mean to scare you, it’s okay. You don’t have to sit on the floor.”

Barry pulled one of the chairs away from the table and gestured to it. “I meant that you should sit down in one of these. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for you to misunderstand me. It’s okay. You’re safe. It’s okay, you won’t be punished for sitting in this chair, alright? You’re supposed to sit in it. It’s for you.”

Scrambling to his feet with a small cry of fear, Cisco moved to run for the chair. “I’m sorry Sir, I’m sorry, I’m sorry Sirs, I didn’t mean to, I didn’t mean to, I promise, I promise, I’ll be good, I didn’t mean to be bad,” he babbled, sitting down hard in the chair and cringing. “I swear it won’t happen again, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Barry said gently. He had to stop himself from reaching out to give the kid a hug. “You didn’t know. Things are really different here, and I know you’re scared of them, trust me, but-you won’t get in trouble here. It’s okay if you don’t believe that, but I hope you can believe it soon.”

Cisco nibbled on his lip as Joe approached the table, smiling at Iris as his daughter came out of the kitchen. Cisco was well aware that even though Barry was a higher ranking Asset than he was, he still didn’t have nearly as much authority as a Supervisor like Joe or a Handler like Iris. Which meant that he also didn’t have the authority to tell Cisco that everything would be okay. That everything would be safe.

“Hey, baby,” Joe said, leaning over and pulling out a chair for Iris. She kissed his cheek and sat down. “How was your day?” She looked at Cisco before looking back at Joe, clearly confused. He sighed and lowered his voice, but Cisco could still easily hear him. “Just act like this is a normal dinner, okay? To show Carlos what it’s like.”

Iris nodded. “It was good. All the regulars came in, and a couple new faces.” She looked at Barry. “Tell Hartley there’s a new guy who sits in the right corner by the window on the side with the door, and tell Caitlin I’ve finally figured out the right amount of milk to put in her coffee.” She snorted. “Remember when this was supposed to be a temporary job?”

“It still is a temporary job,” Barry objected. “Just until someone else sees how excellent you are and decides to hire you for something that pays more instead of picking somebody less qualified.”

Iris laughed a little. “I’m glad you care so much, Bar.”

Cisco looked back and forth between them, brows furrowed in confusion, as Joe rolled his eyes good-naturedly. This didn’t make any sense. How could Barry talk so  _ casually  _ to a Handler? How could he talk so freely in front of a Supervisor even if Iris  _ had  _ given him extra special permission to talk to her like that? It just didn’t make any sense. It didn’t make any sense at all and he didn’t like it.

“Hey, why don’t you take some food?” Joe said softly, and Cisco flinched. What? Who was he talking to? He must’ve been talking to someone else, someone other than Cisco, even though Cisco was the only one who still didn’t have any food on his plate. Even Barry had taken some, and Cisco hadn’t heard him ask for any permission to do so. “You must be hungry, it’s been a long day for you.”

Cisco shifted nervously but didn’t move to take anything off the plate. He sniffled and hoped that Joe would tell him who he was talking to before he had to ask him himself, but… Joe, Iris, and Barry were all looking at him expectantly, and Cisco had no choice but to whisper in a tiny voice, “Are-are you talking to me, Sir?”

“Yeah, buddy, I’m talking to you,” Joe sighed. “It’s okay. If it looks like I’m talking to you, then I’m talking to you, and if you make a mistake about that then you won’t be punished, I promise.”

“But-but-” Cisco swallowed and ducked his head down. If Joe wanted him to eat, then that meant that he had to eat. He needed to eat. If Cisco didn’t eat when Joe told him to then Joe would get the tubes and the formula out and he would  _ make  _ Cisco eat. Joe would force him to eat. “Yes Sir. What would you like me to eat, Sir?”

Joe stood up and Cisco cringed. But Joe just scooped some of the noodles and some sauce and put it on Cisco’s plate, sprinkling some cheese on the pile of sauce and then setting a slice of bread on top. “You can take some more if you’re still hungry, I promise. You have permission and you won’t be in trouble for it.”

Cisco swallowed. “Yes Sir.”

He reached forward, snatching the bread off of the top of the sauce and stuffing it in his mouth before Joe could decide that this was too much food for an Asset to have. Barry smiled at him and looked at Iris, changing the subject to something a little more ‘normal’. Joe had said that it was important to behave normally so that Carlos would see what usually went on in the West household. So he had to talk like everything was normal.

(Barry remembered clearly how he himself had reacted when Joe tried to pretend that everything was normal. He’d thrown a plate at a wall and yelled at him to stop acting like things were fine, like everything was fine, while at the same time Joe was trying to put Barry’s dad behind bars. That wasn’t  _ okay,  _ that wasn’t  _ normal,  _ he couldn’t just-he couldn’t just-)

“So, Iris,” he said, trying to find some sort of neutral topic that wouldn’t scare the kid and would sound somewhat normal that they  _ hadn’t  _ discussed already. “Um. Uh.”

Iris blinked at him slowly before rolling her eyes and looking at her dad. “So, dad, any sightings of the Flash lately?” 

The corner of her mouth curled up a little, and it was clear that she was at least partially joking, but Joe choked on his spaghetti. Iris’s eyes widened a little, and Barry sent Joe a nervous look. Cisco whimpered a little. He didn’t get it. Cisco remembered the Supervisor and the Handler and the Doctor calling Barry ‘Flash’ (apparently, someone’s blog had said something). Was she asking about whether or not Barry had been seen while he was hunting down other Assets for his Supervisor? Was she asking if Barry had been good enough to remain hidden? Or was he supposed to be seen?

“Dad?” Iris patted him on the back. “You okay?”

Joe sighed and wiped his mouth with a napkin. “No, there haven’t been any new sightings, because he’s not  _ real,  _ Iris.” Barry winced and Iris bristled. Cisco shrank back. Joe took a deep breath and opened his mouth before stopping and looking at Cisco. “It’s okay,” he said instead, giving Iris a look. “I’m not going to hurt you, Carlos. And I’m not going to hurt either of them, okay?”

“Please don’t,” Cisco pleaded, trying to make himself small in the chair. “Please, please, please, Sir. Was it something I did? Was it something I did wrong? I didn’t mean to make you mad, I promise, I promise, please Sir-please Sir-I-Sir-”

His breathing came fast and his hands shook as he gripped the table. Joe got up and started walking over to him, causing Cisco to make a tiny strangled yelping sound. Joe stopped and put his hands on the table where Cisco could see them. “I’m not coming any closer, I promise. And I’m not going to hurt you. I will  _ never  _ hurt you, I promise.”

Cisco bit down on his tongue and braced himself. Adults lied, unless they were Assets, and Supervisors especially were the worst kind of liar. The worst kind of adult. Even worse than the Doctors and the Handlers and the Enforcers and everyone else. Supervisors were the worst kind. “You-you can p-punish me, Sir. I promise I can take it. I’ve had lots of practice, S-Sir, I promise, I won’t be too loud if you don’t want me to. I can be quiet and still while you p-punish m-me.”

“Oh, kiddo.” Joe looked at Barry and Iris, who both jumped to their feet and left, although they stayed just inside the doorway to watch. “I’m not going to hurt you. I’m going to keep you safe, I promise, it’s okay. Deep breathing. In… And out. Just like that, follow my lead. You’re doing just fine. You’re safe. I promise, you’re safe here.”

“I didn’t mean to,” Cisco repeated. “I didn’t mean to be bad. I promise, I promise, I promise, I didn’t mean to be bad, I swear I didn’t mean to be bad. I swear. I won’t do it again. I promise, please just tell me what it was I did wrong and I’ll make sure I never, ever do it again. Promise.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Joe said firmly but still softly and gently. “You didn’t do  _ anything  _ wrong, so you’re not in any trouble, I promise. It’s safe here. You’re safe here. It’s going to take you awhile to adjust, I know, but I promise-you’re safe here and you haven’t done anything wrong.”

“Did-did Barry do something wrong?” Cisco whimpered, eyes flickering to the doorway. “Did he do something wrong, Sir? I can take his punishment for him, he doesn’t-he doesn’t know the Rules as well as I do, I can help teach him but please-please-please let me take the pu-punishment for wh-whatever he did wrong, I promise he can d-do better-”

Begging to be allowed to teach another Asset the Rules wasn’t something that had ever really worked, but Cisco knew that he had to try. He’d been able to stay in the same cell as Bette to help teach her the Rules, Eiling had allowed them to stay together, so maybe… Just maybe… If Joe was kind enough… Then Cisco would be allowed to teach Barry the Rules. Teach him what to do so he wouldn’t be punished by the Supervisor.

“Barry didn’t do anything wrong either. And I’m not going to hurt him, I promise. I swear to you that I won’t ever hurt you or Barry, does that make you feel any better?” Joe offered. “You’re both safe here. I raised Barry since he was a kid, a little bit younger than you, and I haven’t ever hurt him while I was taking care of him.”

Barry nodded quickly from his place in the doorway. “Joe isn’t like the other people who used to hurt you. He’s a good person. It’s his  _ job  _ to protect people, like he protected me and like he’s gonna protect you, okay?”

Cisco was well aware that that was a practiced response, something that Joe had trained his weapon to say in case someone questioned if Barry was an Asset or not.

(But that didn’t make sense, not really. Supervisors and Handlers and Doctors and Enforcers were  _ proud  _ of their Assets, they were proud of them and they bragged about how well they had broken them. Gloated about how obedient they were. Told other people about their methods of training, about the horrible things that they did to put Assets back in their places. Why would Joe want to lie about Barry being his Asset? It didn’t make any sense.)

Cisco lowered his head. “Yes Sir. I understand, Sir.”

“You don’t have to understand,” Joe sighed, “not at first. This is very hard for you, I know it is. But it’s going to get better, alright? You’re safe now. And that means no more punishments, no more tests, no more hurting. Why don’t you finish your dinner?”

Cisco reached for the spaghetti with shaking fingers, not making eye contact with Joe. “Yes Sir.”

“Here.” Joe picked up a fork and held it out to Cisco handle-first. “Use this, not your fingers.”

Cisco remembered what Handler Rathaway had said about silverware and about using his fingers, and nodded quickly. Maybe Handler Rathaway had been trying to warn him… Cisco should’ve picked up on that. Should have noticed that Barry was using a fork like a person would, which meant that Cisco was supposed to, too.

Hesitantly, Cisco took the fork from Joe, using it to eat tiny bites off his plate. Joe had given him a lot of food, way too much, but he must have expected him to eat all of it. Otherwise he wouldn’t have given him so much.

Iris and Barry slowly moved back to the table as he ate, exchanging glances with each other and with Joe. Cisco hoped that he hadn’t done anything to make Iris angry. Making Joe, a Supervisor, angry was bad enough, but things would be even worse for him if he made a Handler like Iris mad.

The rest of dinner was silent.

* * *

Moon squeaked and stuck her nose in Hartley’s ear, sneezing loudly. He groaned and rolled his face away, accidentally brushing his cheek against a soldering iron which woke him up fully as he jolted back, swearing loudly. Moon gave him a disapproving look and scurried off back to her cage, her round belly impeding her slightly as she waddled across the ramp that led from Hartley’s desk to her home.

Hartley dabbed some burn cream on his cheek, wincing as he unplugged the soldering iron and gave it a dirty look. He had a first aid kit handy for these kinds of things, which happened more and more often, but that didn’t make them any less painful the fiftieth time. Hartley put a bandaid on his cheek, not bothering to check and see if it was one of his plain ones or one of the Disney ones Jerrie had given him on her last visit.

A knock on the door made him scramble to grab a sheet and throw it over his project, tripping over his chair and over his own feet as he rushed to get the door after making sure his work was sufficiently obscured by its plain white covering.

Caitlin stood outside his door, looking completely and utterly miserable.

And drunk. She looked very, very drunk.

Before Hartley could stop her, Caitlin stumbled into his apartment and landed on his couch, sprawling face down. “I don’t have my keys.”

“We don’t even live in the same apartment building!” Hartley threw his hands in the air. “How did you even get here?!”

She rolled over onto her back and looked up at him, her lower lip trembling. “I wanted to come over.”

“Caitlin, go home.” After the words left his mouth, Hartley immediately thought better of it. “No, don’t do that, you’ll get hit by a car or something. You can hardly walk. Just… Lie on the couch for awhile.”

There went his hope of making significant progress on his project that night. He couldn’t work on it with Caitlin here, even if drunk Caitlin was less likely to notice anything about what he was doing than sober Caitlin.

Caitlin squinted at him before bursting into loud giggles and pointing at his cheek. “You’ve got a princess on your face.”

Hartley rolled his eyes. Of course he did. He was really going to have to start discouraging Jerrie from putting her special bandaids in with the rest of his. “Jerrie got them for me.”

Caitlin cooed and sat up before flopping back down. “Whoa. How’s she been?”

“Good,” Hartley said, a small smile flitting across his face. “She’s been pretty good. She’s got a girlfriend now, really sweet according to her, but I haven’t met her to be the judge of that.”

Caitlin gasped loudly and almost fell off the couch. Hartley pressed his foot against her side and rolled her back onto it, grumbling. Caitlin smiled happily at him. “I feel gross.”

“Yeah, that’s because you decided to get drunk on a Tuesday at…” Hartley checked his watch. “Holy shit, Caitlin, it’s only  _ nine thirty,  _ what the hell have you been drinking?!”

“Tequila, mostly.” She tried to sit up and groaned, clutching her head. “Ow.”

“You’re a disaster,” Hartley informed her, “and I wish you had gone home, back to where you  _ live,  _ instead of coming to my house. It’s halfway across the city from yours!”

“I was lonely and I didn’t wanna call Barry.” Caitlin stuck her face in a pillow. “And I miss you. And I miss Ronnie. And I’m sad ‘cause of Carlos. And my whole body hurts.”

Hartley dropped one of the sheets he used to cover Moon’s cage when she was being particularly noisy over her. “There you go, a blanket. Now go to sleep.”

She peeked at him over the top of the blanket. “This smells like rats, Hart.”

“Don’t call me Hart, and of course I know it smells like rats,” Hartley scoffed. “But I’m not giving you my bed, and we’re  _ not  _ sharing it. So you can sleep on the couch.”

“I bet you’re not this mean to Jerrie,” Caitlin grumbled, struggling to cocoon herself in the sheet. “Is she the  _ only  _ person you’re actually nice to?”

Hartley’s stomach clenched. “Yes, she is. Now go to sleep.”

He stormed off. So  _ what  _ if he was only nice to his sister? She was the only one who was nice to him without wanting something in return. She was the only person in his family who was still talking to him, after all, and he was the only one in the family still talking to her. The Rathaways hadn’t really taken kindly to having  _ two  _ freaks in the family, although at least they’d kept Jerrie around until she made a huge ‘spectacle’ of herself by announcing her presence at a Wayne charity gala by marching down the steps in a huge pink dress, a chew necklace, and lipstick.

She’d lived with Hartley for a few days before Ethan (the only person inside Rathaway Mansion who seemed to actually give a shit whether either of them survived) supplied enough money for her to get an apartment. Few people were willing to hire her at first, but she had a job as a barista now. Hartley stopped by to make sure she was still doing okay there every once and awhile, just like she stopped by to make sure he hadn’t killed himself on a diet of coffee and ramen.

So  _ what  _ if he was only nice to Jerrie? She didn’t want anything from him. She wasn’t like Wells. She wasn’t like Barry or Caitlin or Joe, who wanted him because he could help them stop metahumans or because he knew something about them, knew a secret about them, or because he owed something to them. Hartley had been the one to kill Ronnie-he owed it to her to help her. But Wells…

Wells was going to  _ pay.  _

Hartley spun around as he realized with a sickening start that he had left Caitlin  _ alone  _ in there with his project. As annoying as she was when she was drunk, she was usually still coherent enough to remember some things when she woke up. She would  _ definitely  _ remember something like what he was working on. If he didn’t stay with her to make sure that she didn’t take so much as a peek underneath that sheet…

Caitlin beamed at him when he came skidding back into the room. “You’re back!”

“Yeah, I am,” he said, noting with relief that she hadn’t moved from her spot. “And you’re still there, good.” He walked over to the rat cage and tugged Mozart out. He was Caitlin’s favorite, and last time she had gotten this drunk and this close to the rats she had started petting the little guy’s ears while crying. “Do you want to pet Mozart?”

She immediately burst into tears.  _ “Yes.” _

He put the rat down in her lap and watched for a moment before turning back to look at the rat cage. Ronnie’s old favorite, Luna, was napping at the very top in her favorite hammock. Hartley reached in and scritched behind her tiny ears.

Ronnie… Ronnie had been nice to him. He’d been nice to Jerrie, too, the first time he met her. Hadn’t yelled or anything when she started talking about Disney, about princesses and retired animation practices and how neat it was that old animatronics were still used on some of the rides. About all the weird ghost stories and myths attached to them. No, Ronnie hadn’t yelled, he’d just… Listened. Asked for more information when Jerrie stopped and hid shyly behind Hartley.

That made Ronnie good in Hartley’s book.

Which meant that against all of his better judgement, Hartley had to figure out where he was, what had  _ really  _ happened to him that night, and how to get him back.

Preferably before he completed his plan to make Wells pay for what he’d done.

* * *

“Alright, so,” Barry began, and Cisco snapped to attention. They were in the same bathroom that he had been in before, but now Barry had a change of clothes in his hands as well as a toothbrush and some sparkly blue toothpaste. “I know you’ve already been in here, but I’m just gonna give you the rundown on how everything works, okay?”

He looked at Cisco expectantly. The boy jumped and nodded quickly. “Yes Sir.”

“It’s just Barry, remember?" Barry sighed. “But, okay, here’s the deal. You can shower every other night or in the morning when Joe and Iris aren’t using it. Don’t come in the bathroom if somebody else is already using it. You can leave the seat up, Iris is pretty much used to it, but you’ll get on her good side if you put it down. This is your new toothbrush and Caitlin-chosen toothpaste. You brush your teeth after breakfast and before you go to bed to stop nasty stuff from happening in your mouth.”

Cisco nodded attentively, carefully adding the new Rules to his list. Barry demonstrated how to use the bath and the shower as well as how to work the sink and flush the toilet. Then he handed over the clothes. Cisco almost moaned in delight at how soft the were.

“There are your pyjamas. You wear them at night to sleep and then you put new clothes on in the morning. Does any of that sound familiar?” Barry asked hopefully.

Cisco flinched. This was a test, then, and he couldn’t afford not to pass it. Which meant that even though it was scary, he had to lie. “N-no, Barry Sir.”

Barry sighed. “We’ll work on it. Do you want me to stay in here while you change and brush your teeth or do you want me to wait outside? I’m gonna have to leave soon and head back to my apartment, but I can wait until you’re in bed.”

Swallowing, Cisco looked down at the floor. “P-please-I need to be-I-alone, please.”

“Whatever you want.” Barry smiled gently and left, leaving Cisco alone in the bathroom.

He changed into the wonderfully soft pyjamas (they must’ve been a reward for something, a new privilege for doing something right for once) quickly, wondering if Barry had wanted him to shower. But he hadn’t said anything… And Cisco couldn’t risk doing something that wasn’t allowed. It didn’t matter how lenient the Supervisor acted, how strange their Assets and their Handlers behaved, one thing always, always stayed the same.

Assets did absolutely  _ nothing  _ without permission.

After a few precious moments of fumbling around, Cisco managed to figure out how to squeeze toothpaste onto the toothbrush and successfully brush his teeth. He did it quickly, hesitantly, carefully remembering only what was absolutely necessary from before in order to complete the action. Eiling had never given him a toothbrush and toothpaste, just a bitter blueish green mouthwash that tasted like drinking poison.

As he brushed his teeth, Cisco looked in the mirror and inspected himself carefully.

The layers of dirt and grime that usually covered his skin had been washed away by his shower at the facility run by Supervisor Wells. The tangles in his hair were still mostly there, although they appeared to have been loosened some. Cisco had already been aware that his hair was long enough to hang down to his shoulders, but now that it was washed it actually looked… Okay. There were bags under his eyes and some old scabs on his face where Eiling’s goons had nicked him while shaving his face along with his head, although lately he’d just been shaving his face to keep Cisco’s hair long and easy to grab.

Cisco didn’t care about his appearance at all, but what he  _ did  _ care about was how the masters thought of him. And they seemed to like it when their Assets were clean. Barry always seemed washed and presentable, the Woodward-Asset hadn’t stopped showing off their muscles the whole time Cisco watched them, and they had told Cisco himself to take showers.

All of that led to one inevitable conclusion; Cisco needed to look presentable before they would showcase him in public as their Asset. Tomorrow he’d wash and brush his teeth again and show them that he was a good Asset, good and presentable and worthy of being kept alive. (Although if he was being honest with himself Cisco didn’t understand the connection between being presentable and being worthy of being alive. But that didn’t matter, because clearly there was a connection in the Supervisor’s eyes.)

Cisco opened the door as soon as he was done and stood nervously with his hands behind his back and his head bowed. Barry smiled at him. “Do you have the clothes you were wearing before? You can wear them again soon as they get washed.”

Cisco spun around and grabbed the clothes off of the floor, holding them out to Barry as his heart hammered. He was sorry, he was sorry, he didn’t mean to do something wrong. It was an accident, really. “I-I’m sorry Barry Sir, I didn’t mean to, I promise I didn’t mean to. I swear I won’t do it again.”

“It’s okay,” Barry rushed to assure him. “You’re not in trouble. C’mon, why don’t you get in bed.”

Ducking his head in a small sort-of bow, Cisco followed Barry back to his new cell. Barry smiled at him. “Alright, tomorrow Joe and Iris will wake you up for breakfast. You can go to sleep, Joe will let you, I promise. You always have permission to go to sleep here, just like back at STAR Labs.”

Biting his lower lip nervously, Cisco looked at the bed and wondered if he was supposed to get on it or go back to his  _ real  _ cell. The one that Iris had called a ‘closet’. But Barry had told him to get in bed, and the bed just looked like a larger version of the cot that Supervisor Wells had let him use at the other facility… Which meant that he was probably allowed to use it. Even if the bed was big and fit for a Supervisor.

Watching Barry warily the whole time, Cisco carefully got on top of the bed and curled up close to the wall, shaking a little with apprehension. Barry smiled wider and moved closer, patting the bed by Cisco’s foot. “Why don’t you get under the covers?”

Cisco rushed to obey, stifling a gasp as he slid under the warm and heavy blankets. Barry somehow managed to make his smile even bigger as he patted the blankets, grin faltering at Cisco’s shivering. “Are you cold? I can get you more blankets if you want me to.”

“N-no Sir, there are already too many blankets, Sir. You don’t have to get me more.” Cisco swallowed and pulled his knees up to his chest so he was curled up beneath the blankets. “I don’t even deserve this many blankets, you do not have to get me more, Barry Sir.”

“You don’t have to earn things here, remember? We told you, you’re free now. No more masters, and no more earning anything. You’re safe now. I promise.” Barry reached out like he was going to brush Cisco’s hair out of his face before pulling his hand back and deciding better of it. “Are you sure you don’t want any more blankets? I promise you won’t be in trouble for it. You can ask for whatever you want here and if we can give it to you than we will.”

Cisco swallowed again. “But-I-yes, Sir.”

Barry sighed. He couldn’t figure out what it was that he could’ve done to make the kid go back to calling him ‘Sir’ instead of by his name, but… Hopefully it would go back to that soon. The poor guy had been so  _ scared  _ of Joe at the dinner table… “Alright, Carlos. It’s your choice.”

Cisco stayed perfectly still as Barry headed for the door, switching the light off and pausing in the doorway. “You can go to sleep, alright? You always have permission to sleep here, even if it isn’t nighttime. You can take naps whenever you want, okay?” Cisco didn’t reply and Barry chewed his lip. “Goodnight, Carlos. Either Joe or Iris will come get you in the morning for breakfast.”

Cisco waited until Barry had closed the door before daring to move, turning his head ever so slightly so he could scan for cameras. He knew that there must have been at  _ least  _ one-there had always been a camera in his cell before, whether it was at the STAR Labs facility or when he was with Eiling. So that the Supervisors could monitor their Assets. Make sure that they were being Obedient even when no Handlers were there.

But as he looked around, Cisco couldn’t see any cameras up in the corners or hidden on the ceiling. They must have been placed somewhere else. And if they were, then that meant that this was a test. They were trying to see if Cisco knew well enough to know that he wasn’t supposed to sleep in a bed. That must have been it. They were testing him to see if he knew that what he was doing was wrong. Bad. Disobedient.

Heart pounding, Cisco scrambled out of the bed, grabbing one of the blankets (he would probably be punished for taking it, he knew, but the blankets were so warm… He didn’t want to risk it, but…) and wrapping it around his shoulders as he opened the door to the closet. His  _ real  _ cell.

Lying down on the floor and using his own arms as a pillow with the blanket draped over him, Cisco let out a small sigh. This felt more normal. Of course, before he had never had a blanket, but it was still close enough to being like it had been before that it felt comfortable.

Closing his eyes and curling up with his knees to his chest as he lay on his side, reminding himself that Barry had  _ told  _ him that it was okay for him to sleep, that Barry had given him permission, Cisco let himself sleep.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “She had the right idea, old man, don't you think - to disappear before it gets too late?”--Patrick Modiano

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for this chapter include a vibe of a (past) kidnapping at the end, and Cisco remembering a sort of discussion about rape (it's not described in detail or gone into, and the paragraph that it's in starts with '...Some of the guards had told him stories'). Stay safe!
> 
> (This chapter is also slightly shorter than most.)

At roughly eleven thirty, a scream ripped through the West household and startled Joe awake where he had been slowly nodding off in his chair in front of his computer, looking through the medical file that Caitlin had compiled on their new… Guest.

Before he even knew what he was doing, Joe was halfway up the stairs, one hand reaching for a gun that wasn’t there and his heart in his throat. Had that been Iris? The kid? Was there someone in the house? If  _ anybody  _ had touched his kids-

(Joe wasn’t surprised at himself for considering Carlos, or whatever his real name was, as ‘his kid’. It had only taken three days for Barry to be accepted into the fold after Iris had come home from school with a story about a boy in her class who helped her put worms back on the grass so Tony Woodward and his friends wouldn’t squish them on purpose.)

Joe almost had a heart attack when he shoved the door to Carlos’s room open and saw that the bed was empty, and looked like it had been hardly slept it. The fear kicked up a notch when another scream rang out, and Joe realized that it was coming from the closet. Rushing over to it, he yanked the door open, relief crashing over him in a wave as he saw Carlos sleeping there.

As Joe watched, the kid screamed again, tears leaking down his cheeks as his legs kicked out. Joe knelt down, sending a twinge of pain up his spine as he reached out to shake Carlos’s shoulder. He knew the boy didn’t like to be touched, but this was something of an emergency. Joe was well aware that Carlos had regular nightmares thanks to Caitlin and Hartley, but that didn’t make it any easier to watch him thrash and sob on the floor of the closet.

“Shh, shh, shh,” Joe soothed, rubbing the kid’s shoulder as he tried to shake him awake. “It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s just a dream, just a nightmare. You’re safe. Wake up, kiddo, you’re safe, I promise you you’re safe. I’m going to protect you. Wake up, Carlos. It’s just a dream.”

Carlos’s eyes snapped open with one last scream, and he started sobbing in earnest as he rolled away from Joe and rocked so he was sitting up with his face buried in his knees. “I-I-I’m sorry, Sir,” he sobbed, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, I didn’t mean to, I swear I didn’t mean to disturb you, I’m sorry Sir, please don’t be mad, I didn’t mean to do it.”

“It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay,” Joe said gently, pulling his hand back and setting them on the carpeted floor where Carlos could see them. “It’s okay. You’re safe. I’m not going to hurt you just because you had a nightmare. It’s alright, I promise. You’re doing just fine, you’re doing so well, that’s right, just take deep breaths. With me.”

Joe was no stranger to calming people down after nightmares. Iris used to have reoccurring ones when she was a little kid, and of course there had been Barry’s nightmares about the man in yellow. Joe had been so sure that they had been nightmares about his father killing his mother, that there hadn’t actually been any man in yellow. There couldn’t have been. Just a murderer and a scared little boy who watched his mother die.

He knew better than that now.

“Please, Sir, I swear I didn’t mean to,” Carlos sniffled. “It was an accident I promise it won’t happen again I promise I promise I pr-promise it won’t ever happen again.”

“It’s alright. I’m not mad at you, and you’re not in any trouble,” Joe said gently, watching the boy carefully to make sure he wasn’t just inadvertantly making things worse. “It’s okay. You’re not in trouble, kiddo. You’re safe, I promise. Everything’s okay, you’re safe, you’re safe, you’re safe.”

_ (“Put me down!” Cisco squealed, thrashing. “Put me down, put me down, put me down, please, please, I want to go home, put me down, put me down!”) _

“I wanna go home,” Carlos sobbed, fat tears spilling down his cheeks. “I wanna go home, please let me go home, please let me go home.”

“Okay, kiddo. I’ll take you home,” Joe soothed. “Can you tell me where home is? So I can help you? So I can take you home? I just want to make you feel better, and I think I can do that if you tell me where your home is so I can take you back there. Do you think you could do that for me? To help me take you back home?”

“Can’t. Can’t. Can’t. I  _ won’t,  _ I  _ won’t,  _ I won’t let you take Mama and Papa and Dante too, I won’t.” Cisco gripped at his hair. He couldn’t let the masters take the rest of his family, he couldn’t-he couldn’t-he couldn’t-let them take Dante and his Mama and his Papa or-or-he  _ couldn’t.  _ He just  _ couldn’t  _ do it. “I won’t. I won’t. Please, Sir, I won’t let you hurt them.”

“I’m not going to hurt your family, Carlos,” Joe said gently. He hesitated. “I do have a question for you, though. Can you please answer it honestly? I know you’re very, very scared, but I promise I’m not going to hurt you. It’s okay. You’re safe with me, Iris, Barry, Caitlin, Hartley, and Wells. I promise none of us are going to hurt you. Do you think you can answer a question for me, son?”

_ (“Answer me, brat,” Eiling growled. “Who do you belong to?” _

_ Cisco tried to lift his head up off of the floor, sniffling. “You, Sir, I belong to you. I belong to you and nobody else. You are my master, Sir. I belong to you.” _

_ “That’s right,” Eiling sneered. “You’re  _ mine.  _ You’re my lab rat. You’re nothing but dirt. You were never a person.”) _

“Y-yes Sir,” Cisco whispered. He swallowed. “I will be good, Sir.”

“Did you family give you to the people who hurt you?” Joe asked softly. “I know you’re scared and I know you probably miss your family, but I need to know if they helped the people that hurt you like this. You won’t be in trouble no matter what you tell me, okay? I promise.”

Cisco flinched back, eyes wide. “They would never hurt me!” He hissed, surprised at his own daring. “I-I’m sorry, Sir, I didn’t mean to talk back, I really didn’t mean to, but-they wouldn’t hurt me, they loved me, but-but my old master said-he said that they would hate me because I’m a dirty freak. But they didn’t hurt me. They loved me.”

“Okay. Thank you for telling me, Carlos. I know it’s hard for you to answer my questions. And I understand that you’re very scared because you’ve been hurt very badly. I’m very proud of you for answering the question. Do you want to move out of the closet and up onto the bed where it’s more comfortable?” Joe slowly reached out his hand for Carlos to take. He knew it was unlikely that the boy would trust him enough to let him help him up onto the bed, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t try.

Cisco looked at the hand that Joe was holding out. He didn’t understand. He knew Joe probably wanted him to take it with his own hand, but… He didn’t know  _ why.  _ Why would a master like Joe want him to take his hand? Or go back up onto the bed?

…Some of the guards had told him stories. Told him that he was lucky that Eiling was the one to be his master, since any other person would have decided that he was too pretty to go to waste. What if Joe was like that? Like one of the masters that the guards had warned him about? Cisco didn’t want to think about it, but he couldn’t stop himself. They guards had  _ told  _ him what other people would do to him, even if they had never done it to him themselves.

Cisco couldn’t stop thinking about that possibility, and it made his blood run cold as he hugged his knees and eyed Joe’s hand with suspicion in his eyes.

Joe smiled encouragingly at him, but it was a little bit too forced. Cisco hesitantly reached back. He knew that even if Joe was planning on hurting him, but that didn’t mean that he had permission to Disobey when a master was giving him some sort of unspoken Order.

“Good job,” Joe praised when Cisco took his hand. He stood up, helping Cisco to his feet and herding him carefully over to the bed. “Climb on in. It’s okay. You’re safe here, I promise. I would rather die than let anybody hurt you ever again, okay? I understand that you’re scared of us, and I know you’ve been through some very terrible things, but I hope one day you can trust me enough to let me help you recover.”

Joe kept holding Cisco’s hand even as the boy slid underneath the blankets, yawning. He was so, so tired and he just wanted to sleep, but-but-he couldn’t sleep with the Supervisor right there. He couldn’t… He…

Exhaustion won out over fear, and Cisco drifted off to sleep, still holding on tightly to Joe’s hand. Joe stayed for a few more minutes, watching him sleep before standing up and heading out into the hallway. Luckily, Iris had always been a deep sleeper, so it didn’t seem like their guest’s distress had woken her up.

He stayed outside of Carlos’s door for the rest of the night, need for sleep of his own be damned.

* * *

“Hey, you. Are you done using the computer?” A ten year old kid cross her arms and glared.

Dante blinked at her, eyes unfocused from looking at the screen for so long while being so goddamn exhausted. “Huh?”

“The librarians said you’ve been here for three hours, and I need to work on my paper for school.” The kid stomped her foot. “Don’t you have a computer at home?”

“There’s no need to be a dick about it,” Dante muttered, reaching up to brush their hair off of their forehead and yawning. “And that’s none of your business. Besides, why don’t  _ you  _ have a computer at your house?”

“We don’t have a printer,” she dismissed. “And my mom hates it when I use it to type. She says it gives her a headache. So let me use it. It’s not fair for you to be hogging it.”

Dante closed their tabs and signed out, glaring at the kid. “It’s all yours,” they grumbled, putting on their backpack and heading out of the library, wincing as a fat drop of rain landed directly on top of their head. “Stupid kids.”

They were trying to do  _ important  _ work, like solving a years-old cold case surrounding the disappearances of Francisco Ramon and Armando Ramon.

Okay, so maybe it wasn’t quite a cold case, considering there had been an earthquake and the police had found blood, meaning that the official verdict was that both of Dante’s siblings were dead, but they refused to give up. Dante just  _ knew  _ they were alive. They  _ knew  _ it.

(And after all this time working on trying to solve the mystery of what had happened to them, Dante refused to concede and agree with the police when they said that Cisco and Armando were gone. They wouldn’t just leave Dante like that, they  _ wouldn’t,  _ or at least that had been what Dante insisted at first when their Mama had first sat them down and told them through tears that Armando and Cisco were dead, that they were never coming back.)

Stupid kids.

Okay, that wasn’t  _ exactly  _ fair, considering that Dante was only twenty-one and basically still had the heart of a child, but… At least they had never been  _ that  _ much of an asshole to a stranger. Or at least they hoped that they hadn’t. (Probably not. Their Mama would’ve told them if they had been.)

It was raining even harder now, and Dante pulled their backpack up so that it covered their head. The poor backpack had been through much worse, so they weren’t really worried about ruining it, which was lucky considering that it was already fairly soaked.

The last time Cisco and Dante ever really spoke, Dante laughed in his face and told him that they had far more important things to do, like practice his scales, than play outside with toy planes. Dante was pretty sure that that was what they regretted the most in their life. At least their last words to Armando had been somewhat kind, and they had plenty of good memories with him.

But Cisco…

Dante had to make it up to him for failing him all those years ago. For not being a better sibling. For not disappearing with them.

Dante  _ was  _ going to find out where Armando and Cisco had gone, the police and their parents be damned.

* * *

“So,” Iris announced, “as a housewarming present, kind of, I got you  _ these.” _

Cisco stared at her. She’d taken him here after breakfast (here, apparently, Cisco would be given breakfast, lunch, and dinner, like at the other facility. He still thought it was too much food)-apparently it was her room, but it looked just like his cell did. So it was probably just the unused cell of another Asset while the master had something  _ even more  _ luxurious.

Then she had dumped a box of colorful things that seemed familiar (from Before but he wasn’t allowed to remember things about Before, he _ couldn’t  _ remember things about Before) on the bed.

“Is-is this a test, Ma’am?” Cisco asked nervously. “I-I don’t understand, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

“It’s not a test,” Iris assured him. “I thought you might want to play with me. They’re Legos.”

Cisco froze. He-he remembered that, a little bit. “Ma’am…?”

“You don’t have to call me Ma’am,” she reminded him. “Just Iris is fine. Do you want to play with them with me? It’s okay if you don’t, but they’re really fun because you can build things, and from what my dad said you like building things.”

(Joe had told Iris that Hartley was working on something to help sway the public opinion of STAR Labs back toward something more positive, and that Carlos had helped out with that.)

Cisco nodded a tiny bit, shyly. “I-I like making things and being useful, Ma’-Iris.”

“You don’t have to be useful now that you’re here,” Iris said. “The point is just to have fun. Haven’t you ever had fun with someone? Before those people hurt you? With your mom and dad or with your siblings-do you have any siblings?” Her dad had told her what had happened the night before, and Iris decided to make it her mission to figure out as much as she could about the kid’s family. “Any sisters or brothers?”

_ (“Dante, let me in!” Cisco banged on the door to his brother’s room. “I wanna come in!” _

_ “Give us a second, Cisco!” Dante yelled back. “We’re talking about grown up things! No kids allowed!” _ _  
_ _ “You’re only three years older than me!” Cisco shouted. “I want to come in!” _

_ He shoved hard enough on the door to push it open, just enough that he caught a glimpse of Armando sitting on Dante’s bed with his legs crossed and tears streaming down his cheeks before Dante slammed the door shut again in Cisco’s face. “It’s still grown up stuff! Like-like-” Dante paused. “Like business dinners!” _

_ Cisco scowled and stomped off. “Fine! You’re boring and I don’t want to hang out with you anyways!”) _

Cisco trembled. “I-I do not-Ma’am-”

_ (“Dante-?” Cisco stared and jumped up, trying to pull Dante down to his eye level. “Your nose is bleeding!” _

_ “I know,” Dante grumbled, pressing a tissue against his nose. “Some kids were yelling at Armando again ‘cause he was crying so I punched them in the face and then I got punched after I called Miles a  _ pendejo.”

_ “Mama says you’re not supposed to get in fights,” Cisco frowned. “‘Specially after last time when you got called to the principal’s office ‘cause you punched Norma in the mouth after she told Armando he was a-”) _

“It’s okay,” Iris said softly. “I know you’re scared. I know you don’t trust me. And that’s okay, I promise, you’re not in any trouble. Nothing you do here will make us hurt you, I swear. My dad’s job is to protect people, and I want to help him keep you safe. It’s okay.”

_ (“Armando, wake up, wake up-”) _

Cisco flinched back. “I don’t-remembering Before is forbidden, Ma’am. I know that. I do not remember anything about Before because I am a good pet and a good Asset and I know how to Obey Orders. I promise, Ma’am, I promise, I do not remember anything about Before. I promise.”

“What if I told you that we want you to remember things from before you were hurt?” Iris asked. “Would you be able to remember things then? Because that’s what we want. We want you to feel better and to get back home to your family”- _ if they’re still alive, _ Iris added silently in her head-“so it’s a good thing if you remember something from before. We want you to be safe and happy.”

Cisco sniffled a little bit. “Please, Ma’am, I promise, I don’t remember. I don’t remember anything from before, I really don’t, I swear.”

“Alright,” Iris sighed, “I believe you. I believe you don’t remember anything. Do you want to play with the Legos with me?” She pushed a small handful of them toward him coaxingly. “It’s a lot of fun.”

Hesitantly, reluctant to make the Master angry but still unsure if this was a test or not, Cisco picked up the handful of Legos. “Wh-what would you like me to make, Ma’am?”

Iris sighed and didn’t correct him on her name. They’d work on it. “You can make anything you want, Carlos. Anything at all. I’ll be making something too, and at the end we can show each other what we made, okay? It doesn’t matter how it looks, the point is to have fun.”

“I can make anything I want?” Cisco blinked. This had to be a test. He needed to make something Useful for the Master, and then if it was satisfactory he would be allowed a reward of some kind. Maybe a shower or extra food. (Probably not extra food. They were already wasting so  _ much  _ by giving him so many big meals to make him a strong Asset.)

Iris nodded kindly. “That’s right.”

“Do I have permission to use more Legos, Ma’am?” Cisco asked nervously.

“Of course. You can use as many as you want,” Iris answered warmly. She took a handful of her own and started making something herself, watching Cisco out of the corner of her eye to see what he would do, smiling to herself when he slowly took some more and start to put them together.

For awhile they worked in silence, until Cisco broke it with a small humming sound of confusion. “M-Ma’am?”

“Yes, Carlos?” Iris looked at him, her mouth forming a tiny ‘O’ shape as she looked at what he had made in the short time that they had been working. (She checked the time and found that it had only been about half an hour.) “...Wow.”

Cisco looked down at the Lego gun that he had made. “Th-there’s no power source, Ma’am. And I didn’t have anything to make the insides with so it doesn’t work right. Is that okay? Or-or do I have to make it work?”

“Dad wasn’t kidding when he said you liked to make things,” Iris murmured under her breath. “And I think it looks great, Carlos. You don’t have to make it function. But-but if it  _ did  _ work, hypothetically, what would it do?”

“It-it would be like the cold gun that my old Master had me make,” Cisco admitted. “I-I know that I would get in trouble for making another one because the last one hurt Barry but I did not know what else to make, Ma’am.”

“Barry got hurt?!” Iris stiffened.

Cisco flinched with a whimpering sound. “I didn’t mean to I promise I didn’t know why I was supposed to make it but then I saw that it had hurt Barry and I got scared but Barry said it was okay so-so please don’t be mad, please don’t be mad at me, I didn’t mean to hurt Barry I promise I didn’t.”

Iris frowned. “I-I’ll talk to Barry about it.” She couldn’t help but get the feeling that there was something else going on, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. “I believe that you didn’t mean to do it, Carlos. I promise.” Changing the subject, she said, “Do you want to see what I made with my Legos, Carlos?”

Cisco knew that there was only one right answer to that question. “Yes Ma’am.”   


Iris moved her hands and showed him what she had made. Cisco tilted his head. It was lopsided and he couldn’t really tell what it was, outside of a box on top of a flat red piece.

Seemingly sensing his confusion, Iris flushed a little. “It’s a house, see? These are the walls, and this is the roof, and the big peice is the floor.”

“It’s very nice, Ma’am,” Cisco said a little hesitantly. “I like it.”

Iris grinned at him. “Thank you. Do you want to make something else? I can try to make what you made and you can try to make a house, if you want.”

Cisco tilted his head. “...O-okay, Ma’am.”

This was a weird training exercise, Cisco decided as he grabbed some more Legos and easily disassembled his gun. But he was pretty sure he liked it.

* * *

Barry spun around slowly in his spinny chair, which was slowly giving Hartley a tick in his right eye every time it squeaked. Barry tilted his head back and groaned loudly before sighing and Hartley snapped, whipping around and throwing his pencil at him, which bounced off of the back of Barry’s head and made him yelp. “What the hell could  _ possibly  _ cause you to continuously make that noise you complete and utter-”

“I don’t know how to help Carlos,” Barry sighed before looking at Hartley. “And jeez, calm down. You need to get some sleep.”

“I’m perfectly well rested,” Hartley growled. That was a huge lie, considering he’d been up all night working for the past two days with only on-and-off naps, but Barry didn’t need to know that. “And In case you’ve forgotten,  _ all  _ of us have no idea how to help Carlos. You’re not the only one who wants to do something and can’t.”

_ Especially before Wells manages to get his talons into him,  _ Hartley added silently. Taking down Wells was going to be hard enough as it was, Hartley didn’t need to worry about some hero-worshipping kid getting caught in the crossfire. Last time a person like that had been hurt because of Wells, it had been Hartley himself. Nobody was going to go through that ever again. Not on Hartley’s watch.

“Yeah, right. You’ve got bags under your eyes the size of dinner plates, and even though Caitlin’s still sleeping off her hangover she still called me this morning to tell me that you haven’t been getting any sleep lately.” Barry frowned at him. “Is something wrong? Other than all the stuff with Carlos, of course-I haven’t really been able to sleep because of that myself, so…”

Hartley took Barry’s accidentally offered way out with gratitude. Anything was better than the truth of what he was doing, what he was working on. “It’s just all the stuff with the kid. Hell, we don’t even know his real name, so it feels weird to call him ‘Carlos’. We don’t know anything about him outside of that he’s a little abused kid with powers that he can’t control.”

“Like Bette,” Barry murmured. “No wonder they got along before she-” He cut himself off and shook his head before continuing again, even softer than before. “Neither of them know-knew-how to control their powers, both of them were hurt  _ because  _ they had powers…”

Hartley narrowed his eyes. “You still don’t think Eiling did it?”

“I… I don’t know,” Barry admitted. “Eiling is a monster, but-a  _ kid?  _ A little kid? Would he really do that?”

“You seem to have forgotten that I was there when Wells and Eiling worked together, however briefly, Allen,” Hartley said softly. He shook his head almost imperceptibly. “And if Eiling can show the same cruelty to a metahuman like Sans Souci that he did to a gorilla… I think he could do just as bad to a child.”

They sat in somber silence for a few long moments before a loud beeping rang out, and Barry jumped about a foot into the air. He shook himself and looked at Hartley before vanishing with a crackle of lightning and reappearing in his suit.

“Duty calls, I guess,” he said with a shrug. “Where am I going?”

Hartley checked. “Bank on Cunningham and Sampere. Robbery in progress-go. And hurry up, that’s where Caitlin banks.”

As Barry sped off, his voice echoed over the speakers behind him, “How do you even know that, Hart?”

“Don’t call me Hart,” Hartley snapped on impulse. “Only Jerrie can call me that. And I know because Caitlin can’t keep a secret to save her life. Besides, before the particle accelerator explosion I made it my business to know at least  _ one  _ secret on each employee, even if most of them weren’t nearly as innocent as where they banked.”

“Careful, Hartley,” Barry laughed, the sound fuzzing out over the speakers. “You’re starting to sound a little bit like a supervillain.”

Hartley forced out a fake laugh and looked down at the table. This all could’ve been so much easier for everyone if Barry Allen wasn’t so goddamn likable, if Joe West wasn’t so goddamn smart, if Caitlin wasn’t so goddamn trusting, if Wells’s particle accelerator explosion hadn’t done more than just end some lives and hurt people, if there wasn’t suddenly an abused child that needed their help-

No. Not their help. Not Hartley’s help, and certainly not  _ Wells’s  _ brand of so-called ‘help’. Barry, Joe, and Caitlin… Fine, yes, whatever. They were good people, even if he hadn’t known Barry and Joe for as long as he had known Caitlin. Even if Barry  _ was  _ a bumbling idiot at times, especially when it came to Iris West, Joe already knew how to handle abuse cases and Caitlin was a doctor. They didn’t need Hartley’s help.

Pretty soon, they’d know that. But not yet.

“Holy  _ shit,  _ Hartley,” Barry gasped over the speakers. “This place is-oh my god. Everyone’s trying to kill each other, I-”

Hartley stiffened, fixing his eyes on the vitals in Barry’s suit. They were fluctuating, but it was the normal amount for someone running at  _ super speed,  _ which was good. He didn’t seem to be injured, either, but… “Allen?”

“I’m here,” Barry responded, heart rate jumping on the monitor. “I’m okay, I just-I think it’s over.”

“What happened?” Hartley asked. “Your vitals went wild. Is everyone okay?”

“Things just went a little nuts,” Barry panted over the comms. “It looked like-have you ever seen Mean Girls?”

“Do I look like someone who has seen Mean Girls?” Hartley snapped. “Just tell me what happened, Allen.”

“I said everyone was trying to kill each other in here, and I meant it,” Barry sighed. “I don’t know why. But they seem to be calming down now. I don’t think they understand  _ why  _ they tried to kill each other, though. Half of them are crying.”

“You think it was a metahuman?” Hartley asked.

“I don’t think there’s anything else that can explain this,” Barry admitted. “Except a mass hallucination? Maybe caused by a gas leak?”

Hartley sighed. “You’ll probably get involved with your day job, won’t you? If it’s a gas leak, you’ll find out.”

“Mm.” Barry made a small sound on the other end, sounding a little bit distracted.

Hartley frowned. “Allen?”

“Sorry. I just-thought I saw something out of the corner of my eye. It’s nothing,” Barry dismissed.

Hartley tried to ignore the uneasy feeling in his stomach. “Eat another energy bar first, but if you’re done at the bank, someone just called 911 about a home invasion on the upper east side…”

* * *

Cisco and Iris were interrupted by a loud knock on the door downstairs, which made Cisco jump about a foot into the air and caused him to knock over the tower of Legos that he was collaborating on with Iris while they tried to see just how tall they could make it.

Iris frowned. “It’s okay. It’s probably just Eddie-you’ll like him, he’s my boyfriend. He probably thinks my dad is here-we’re not going out until later tonight after I’m done with work.” She knew it wasn’t Barry, since he had lived here for so long that he would’ve known better than to knock. “Or someone trying to get signatures for something. I’ll go down there to see. Do you want to wait up here or come down with me?”

Cisco swallowed. He didn’t particularly want to go down there if it was another Master like this ‘Eddie’ would be, but he knew that it would be his duty to protect his Master from harm. “I-I’ll come down with you, Ma’am. I will protect you.”

“That’s very brave of you, Carlos,” Iris praised, smiling to herself. “And while we’re down there, I can make you some lunch. It’s already”-she checked the time-“one in the afternoon. You should’ve eaten an hour ago. Come on.”

Cisco followed Iris down the stairs, nervous. If this really was a new Master that he was about to meet, he was going to have to be on his very, very, very best behavior. He couldn’t afford to act out in front of a new Master like ‘Eddie’ or even in front of Iris. She had already given him far too much leeway when it came to misbehaving, so Cisco had to behave and not give her any reason to hurt him.

But when Iris opened the door, it wasn’t anybody new.

It was Handler Rathaway.

Cisco went very still, half hiding behind Iris, who smiled at the Handler in clear confusion. “Hartley? What are you doing here?”

Handler Rathaway rolled his eyes a little and held out something in front of him. Cisco frowned as he poked his head out from behind Iris. He gasped a little. What the Handler was holding looked like one of the cages that Eiling used to make Cisco stay in, but it was far too small for an Asset to fit in. There was what looked like a soft blue rag inside of it, which was moving around like there was something alive underneath it. There was some kind of sawdust on the bottom of it, and as Cisco watched something that looked almost like a worm moved so it was poking out from underneath the rag.

“Caitlin told me to bring the kids over,” Handler Rathaway sighed.  _ “Apparently,  _ she thinks that it would be good for Carlos’s health for him to meet them.”

Cisco’s breath hitched. This was happening at the  _ Doctor’s  _ suggestion? No, no, no, that couldn’t be good, that meant that something bad was going to happen.

Above him, Iris made a cooing sound. “Aw, I’ve never met your rats. How many did you bring?”

Handler Rathaway flushed a little. “Three. Sleipnir, Ron, and  Yatsuhashi.”

“Sleipner?” Iris raised an eyebrow.

“My little sister named her,” Handler Rathaway said defensively.

As Iris stepped back to allow the Handler access to the inside of the house, accidentally bumping into Cisco and pushing him backwards in the process, Cisco heard her say softly, “I didn’t know you had a little sister. What’s her name?”

“Jerrie.” Handler Rathaway smiled, and Cisco startled a little. It made Handler Rathaway’s face whole face change. He was pretty sure that he’d seen the Handler smile before, he must have, but this was a different kind of smiling. The kind that reminded Cisco of Before. “I think you’d like her, she’s a sweetheart.” He looked at Cisco. “You’d like her too, I think. Even if you are scared of everyone.”

Iris frowned a little, looking a bit taken aback by Handler Rathaway’s forwardness. “Well, uh, do you want to bring the rats upstairs to Carlos’s room? So they can run around on the bed?”

Handler Rathaway nodded. “Lead the way.”

Somehow, Cisco ended up in between Handler Rathaway and Iris as they headed up the stairs, which made him nervous. He didn’t like the feeling of the Handler standing behind him holding a cage, a cage that he could open and try to shove Cisco into. Even if Cisco knew that he wouldn’t fit, he also knew that the Handler wouldn’t care. Of course he wouldn’t care. He would just hurt Cisco.

As soon as they were safely in Cisco’s new cell-room, Cisco darted to the other side of the room, keeping a short distance between him and the Handler and Iris. He knew that they would be able to cross the room easily and take him down, and of course he would have to submit to them and let them beat him and punish him and do whatever it was that they wanted to him, but-but it made him feel at least a  _ little  _ bit safer to be on the other side of the room from them so they couldn’t immediately reach out and hurt him.

Handler Rathaway set his little cage on the bed and opened it, and something poked its tiny head out of the rag. Cisco’s heart stopped.

When Handler Rathaway had said that he had rats in his cage, Cisco had been picturing the same kind of rats that had been in the cells with him at Eiling’s facility. Big and mean and always trying to take his foot. The guards used to shoot at them for fun just to scare Cisco.

This was nothing like that.

The three little rats that stuck their heads out of the cage were clearly related to the things that Cisco had been living with for years now, but they were far softer, with little black eyes that looked around curiously and twitching whiskers. Iris cooed again as she sat down on the bed, gesturing to the spot beside her. “Come sit down, Carlos.”

He sat obediently where she was pointing to, not daring to do it in place after remembering what had happened the night before when Joe had told him to sit in a chair but Cisco misunderstood. (And yet he hadn’t been punished for it, for some reason. He hadn’t been punished. Joe hadn’t beaten him.)

Iris picked up a rat a little bit hesitantly, only for Handler Rathaway to make a noise and readjust her grip on it with his own hands. “Hold her like that. That’s Sleipnir, by the way.” He carefully picked up another one of the rats, this one mostly black with a few white splotches (while Sleipnir was while all over with a dark brown head and brown spots on her sides) and set it down in Cisco’s lap. “This is Ron.”

Cisco stayed very still, looking down at the rat in his lap and gasping a little as Ron dug her tiny claws into the front of his shirt (Iris had given him a new shirt, soft and clean and smelling like it had just been washed, still warm from the dryer. It was red with a little white heart above where Cisco’s own heart was, and he had spent a long time running his hands on it and feeling the way that the fabric changed) and started to climb up it until she was on his shoulder. Cisco didn’t move, eyes huge as he shook a little bit all over.

“Wh-what is she doing, Sir?” He asked nervously as Ron stuck her nose in his ear. He squeaked a little in surprise.

Handler Rathaway laughed. “She’s just getting a feel for you. She’s not going to hurt you, I promise. I made sure to leave everyone who likes to bite at home. Ron might lick you, though. She does that a lot.”

“Lick- _ oh!”  _ Cisco went very stiff as he felt a tiny tongue lick the outside shell of his ear.  _ “Oh!” _

Iris grinned at him, her smile only growing wider at Cisco’s expression. He looked so startled, something that she had seen far too many times in the brief time that she had known him, but this kind of surprise was adorable and it made her want to take a picture to show her dad later. “I think she likes you,” she laughed. “That’s what the licking means, right Hartley?”

Hartley shrugged a little. “Well, sometimes she’s just trying to check and see if you have any food on your skin”-Iris elbowed him and he winced-“but yes. She’s grooming you. It means she likes you.”

“Really?” Cisco gasped, looking at Handler Rathaway with wide hopeful eyes.

“Really,” he confirmed.

Cisco couldn’t stop a huge smile from spreading over his face as he heard Ron nibble curiously on his long hair before sticking her little nose back into his ear. When the rat sneezed, Cisco was so startled that he giggled, reaching up to clap his hands over his mouth and spooking Ron a little.

Iris looked at him with pure and utter delight. Cisco hoped that expression meant that he was doing something right for once. That it meant that they weren’t going to punish him.

(Even if, for some reason, they hadn’t started punishing him yet for doing all sorts of other bad things like talking out of turn and being Disobedient.)

“Do you want me to show you how smart they are?” Handler Rathaway asked. “I brought treats for them.”

Well, actually, Caitlin had told him to bring treats, but that didn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things.

“Treats?” Cisco asked nervously. Treats like his hot showers and extra food? But he only got those when he was good… And he got punished when he was bad. Would the rats get punished if they were bad, too?

“Sunflower seeds,” Handler Rathaway explained. He pulled a ziploc bag out of his pocket and showed it to Cisco and Iris. He shook it for a minute, making the seeds rattle. “Come.”

Ron scrambled down from Cisco’s shoulder, and Sleipner hurried out of Iris’s lap. Yatsuhashi, who still hadn’t left the small travel cage, took her first steps out and settled into the Handler’s lap, twitching her little pink ears as Handler Rathaway held out a single sunflower seed to each of them.

“Do you want to try?” Handler Rathaway asked as he held out the bag of seeds to Cisco. “Just say ‘come’ and then give them a treat when they listen to you.”

Cisco hesitantly took the bag of seeds and looked at the three rats in Handler Rathaway’s lap. “C-come?”

All three of them scurried over to him, Yatsuhashi’s tan nose stuck straight up in the air while Sleipnir and Ron tripped over each other. Cisco couldn’t stop himself from giggling again as they snuffled around his hands. Hoping that Handler Rathaway wouldn’t be mad, he gave them each  _ two  _ sunflower seeds instead of one. They deserved it for following Orders.

Rubbing the top of Sleipnir’s head, Cisco marvelled at how soft the rats were. They were so small and squeaky… He hoped that the Handler didn’t hurt them for Disobeying Orders like Eiling would hurt Cisco. The rats were so small, he didn’t know if they were able to handle Handler Rathaway’s punishments without dying. Cisco didn’t want to think about that, but…

“H-Handler Rathaway, Sir?” He asked nervously, chewing on his lower lip and looking down at the rats so the Handler wouldn’t think that he was making Disobedient eye contact.

“Yes, Carlos?” Hartley looked at him and stopped trying to gesture to Iris to stop taking pictures of the kid to send to Joe later over Carlos’s head.

“Do you-do you hurt them? When they do something wrong and don’t listen to you?” Cisco whispered. His hands were shaking and he could feel his eyes burning as a lump grew in his throat.

Handler Rathaway’s eyes went wide. “No! I wouldn’t hurt them, I care about them.”

Cisco flinched a little bit, sighing in relief. He hadn’t dared to hope-

...And maybe, just maybe, if Handler Rathaway was telling the truth about caring about his rats, even if they were another kind of Asset, maybe one day he would care about Cisco (and Barry) too.

* * *

 

“Well, it must have been a diversion, because there’s a half a million bucks missing from the vault,” Joe sighed. “There’s a tracer in the cash stacks, we’re trying to find the signal. In the meantime, do you have any idea what could have caused such a mass… Whatever this was?”

Barry shrugged and looked around. “A neurotoxin, maybe? A gas leak that caused a mass hallucination? Neither of those are likely, but… I can swab some surfaces and see what I can find. But I think that maybe they got whammied. Hartley thinks so too.”

Joe raised an eyebrow at him. “Did you just say ‘whammied’?”

Barry shrugged a little bit. “I mean, what else am I supposed to say? I was here towards the end, I’m the only reason some of these people aren’t  _ dead.  _ It was really, really weird. I swear, half the people in here looked like they didn’t even know what they were doing.” He hesitated. “And I swear I saw something out of the corner of my eye. A person. I didn’t get a good look at them, but… They were definitely there. I’m not sure if they were the one to release the toxin or whammy everyone or what, but it was pretty suspicious.”

“Well, see what you can find,” Joe said with a frown. “We can’t rule out the possibility that this is a metahuman, but…”

“I know.” Barry looked around, opening his bag. “I guess I’ll get started, then.”

* * *

“Iris,” Barry said, vibrating his vocal chords and looking down at Iris.

“Flash,” she greeted, smiling up at him and trying to tamp down the giddy feeling in her stomach. “You know, it would be really great to call you by your real name.”

Barry’s lips twitched into a small smile. “You mean like… Ralph?”

Iris was pretty sure that he was joking, but she couldn’t stop herself from asking with amusement, “Is your name Ralph?”

Barry sped down the stairs, making sure to stay hidden in the shadows. “What did you want to see me about?”

Iris swallowed. “I-I don’t have much time, my boyfriend-”

“Did you guys break up?” Barry flushed. Dammit, he didn’t mean to say that so fast, he didn’t mean to cut her off like that. Shit, shit, shit.

“No…?” Iris blinked. “What I was going to say is that he’s coming to pick me up pretty soon. But… What I wanted to tell you is that there’s this kid that my dad, Joe West, is fostering, kind of.” Barry’s stomach knotted. Oh no. “And he’s… He’s like you. He has powers like you do, and like Tony Woodward did.”

“Are you sure?” Barry said, making sure his voice was still unrecognizable.

“I’m sure,” Iris replied. “My friend, the one I told you about-he told me. And I trust him. I figured I should tell you. Somebody hurt him, really badly, and I want you to help me find out who. It wasn’t his family, we know that, but-whoever hurt him hurt him because of his powers. Because of what he can do. He’s just a little kid.”

Barry sighed a little. “I’ll look into it,” he promised, not mentioning that he was  _ already  _ looking into it. “My… Friends and I will try to help you.”

Iris opened her mouth to ask who his ‘friends’ were, but before she could Barry’s comm hissed with static and Hartley’s voice sounded in Barry’s ear.

_ “Barry, are you there?” _

Barry touched the comm in response. “What?”

_ “The police got a hit from the tracer hidden in the stolen cash,”  _ Hartley informed him.  _ “SWAT’s closing in on the 1600 block of Pass.” _

_ “Now stop seeing if you can ruin Iris’s love life and  _ go,” Caitlin added.

Barry nodded and looked at Iris again, who was watching him with wide calculating eyes. He must’ve been talking to the people that he called his ‘friends’. “I’ve gotta run.”

“I bet you say that to all the girls,” Iris laughed. She needed her heart to calm down.

“What other girls?” Barry sped off in a crackle of lightning, hoping that Iris couldn’t see that his face was almost as red as his suit.

Iris watched him go. She couldn’t shake off the feeling that there was something going on. Something big was happening right under her nose, something related to Carlos and the Flash, and she would be damned if she didn’t get to the bottom of it somehow. Iris remembered what Carlos had said about the gun that hurt Barry-she still had to talk to Barry about that, but… That meant that there was something going on with Barry, too.

Was it all connected? Was Barry one of the Flash’s ‘friends’? One of the people who helped him save people? But then why had he insisted that the Flash wasn’t real? Why had he tried to get her to stop writing about him on her blog? Something big was definitely going on. And Iris, in that moment, decided to find out what it was.

* * *

Cisco hugged his knees and whimpered a little. Barry had ran him here about half an hour beforehand, setting him down in a chair and then promising he’d be back before rushing out.

‘Here’ being the STAR Labs facility, with both Handler Rathaway and Doctor Caitlin watching him. (He’d thought he was  _ free,  _ he’d thought he was  _ done,  _ he’d thought-) Doctor Caitlin had already had him stand on a scale and listened to his heart again, not hurting him even when he sniffled and flinched and didn’t look her in the eye when she shone a light down his throat. She even  _ complimented  _ him on how Obedient he was, which didn’t make any sense.

Cisco whimpered some more as the Handler stood up and walked over the curved desk-thing with all of the monitors on it for keeping track of Barry’s vitals in the field and tapped the thing that Cisco had seen him use to communicate with Barry while Barry was out hunting down Assets in his red suit.

“Barry, hurry up,” he sighed. “Carlos is getting an antsy. He’s already scared of us,  _ why  _ did you think it was a good idea to leave him with three of the people he thinks are going to hurt him?”

Cisco made himself smaller. “I-I’m sorry Sir.”

“You don’t have to call Hartley ‘Sir’, remember?” Doctor Caitlin said softly. “You’re safe with us. You can just call us by our names.”

“No, Ma’am,” Cisco whimpered. “You don’t have to coddle me, Ma’am. I understand that I am an Asset and a bad freak.”

“You’re not an Asset,” Doctor Caitlin said firmly. “You’re a person. And you’re not a freak, just like Barry and Hartley and I aren’t freaks. I promise.”

Cisco opened his mouth, unsure what he was going to say since talking back was forbidden, but he needed the Doctor to understand that he knew his place, he knew how to follow Orders and he knew how to Obey.

Before he could, Barry whooshed into the room, holding someone (a Handler? An Asset that he had captured?) in his arms. And that person was currently smoking.

“My shirts on fire!” She yelped, springing away from Barry.

Cisco clapped his hands over his ears at the sound, ducking his head down into his shoulders as Barry frantically patted at her shirt for a second before yanking his hands back and shoving the new person’s purse into her hands, which she used to extinguish the sparks.

“S-sorry about that,” Barry stuttered, his ears bright red. He looked at Handler Rathaway and Doctor Caitlin. “You guys remember Felicity, right?”

He put a little bit of extra emphasis on the name while looking at Cisco out of the corner of his eye like he wanted to make sure Cisco understood.

Doctor Caitlin pulled off her jacket and handed it to the new person (Handler?) to cover up the scorch marks. “Hi, Felicity,” she said warmly. “It’s so good to see you. What brings you back to Central City?” She raised her eyebrows. “Not Barry?”

Cisco’s heart rate kicked up. Oh no, oh no, oh no, that meant that this ‘Felicity’  _ was  _ a Handler, that meant that she was here to hurt Barry-

“Not Barry,” Handler Felicity confirmed, and Cisco relaxed a tiny bit. “That’s not happening. We took a look down that road and said no thank you.” She looked at Handler Rathaway. “Hi, Hart.”

“Don’t call me Hart,” Handler Rathaway snapped.

Handler Felicity shrugged and looked at Cisco. “Hey, who’s this?”

Cisco curled back and Barry nudged the new Handler. “That’s the kid I was telling you about. Carlos.”

Recognition flickered across her face. “Oh! Hi, I’m Felicity Smoak. Barry told me your name is Carlos, is that true?”

Cisco looked up at her and didn’t move or say anything. He wasn’t entirely sure  _ how  _ to react to that. Technically, it wasn’t true-his name was Cisco, Cisco Ramon, and nobody was ever going to take that away from him. But he couldn’t risk making the Handlers mad by saying anything about how it  _ wasn’t  _ his name, especially since they had been the ones to call him ‘Carlos’ in the first place.

As the silence stretched out longer, Doctor Caitlin coughed awkwardly and set a hand on Handler Felicity’s shoulder. “You never said why you were here…?”

“Right!” She reached into her purse and pulled out something sharp in a plastic bag-a boomerang, Cisco recognized that much, but it was shinier than the wooden ones that he and his-no. No. Bad thoughts about Before were not allowed. “Actually, I’m here because of this.”

Handler Rathaway took it from her, turning it over in his hands. “Hmm. What are the wings made of? Composite or…” He tapped his fingernails on it. “High-density plastic mix? There’s carbon fiber in here too…”

“Doesn’t it almost feel like it’s vibrating?” Handler Felicity peered down at the weapon, and suddenly Cisco realized  _ exactly  _ why they must have had it. They had it to hurt Barry and Cisco. They had it to punish their Assets, they had it to make their Assets pay whenever they did something wrong. Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no-no, no, please-especially since it  _ was  _ vibrating, it was vibrating and to Cisco that was  _ terrifying.  _ Vibrating things always hurt so much-

Handler Rathaway started to walk away, still turning the boomerang over in his hands. “I’ll run some tests on it.” Handler Felicity followed him, much to Cisco’s relief. “What have you already done? Do you have the results with you now, or…”

Barry watched them go with a small smile, shaking his head and looking at Cisco. “I know Felicity can be a lot, but you’ll get used to her, I promise. It just takes some time.” He moved toward Doctor Caitlin. “So, did you guys come up with anything new about our meta?”

“The officer who was affected tonight said that he saw a flash of red before he lost control-before you ever showed up on the scene,” Doctor Caitlin answered. She tapped something on a screen that Cisco couldn’t see, and he didn’t dare turn around to try to get a good look at it. “I think the meta is inducing rage via the ocular nerve. Oh! And before I forget-Dr. Wells wants to see you.”

Cisco watched Barry frown and shuddered a little as his sort-of friend left. He had a gross feeling in his stomach, and as he curled up a little bit smaller in his chair and was suddenly plunged into a vibe, he suddenly realized why. He hadn’t used his powers all day. No wonder he felt so strange and bad.

_ Rain. There was a lot of rain. Of course, it wasn’t actually getting Cisco wet, since nothing ever really affected him in the vibes, but it restricted his vision some. _

_ “Please,” someone (someone  _ familiar  _ but how did Cisco know them? How? Something inside of him told him that he did, and he trusted that invisible something, but-but-who was it?) said, “I’ll give you what you want. Just-c’mon, please. You said you had a lead for me.” _

_ “I did say that, didn’t I?” Someone (and this voice was completely unfamiliar to him) replied, and if Cisco squinted he could make out the whites of their eyes against their pale skin. “But first you have to do something for me. Those are the rules. You don’t get anything in life without paying for it, kid.” _

_ There was a short silence, an audible gulp, and then the first voice said. “I know. But you don’t want me to pay you out here, do you?” _

_ There was a pause again, then the figure that Cisco could see pounced on the one in the shadows, grabbing them and wrestling them to the ground while they shouted. Cisco pressed back into the shadows, trembling a little. No, no, why was he seeing this, why was he seeing this, this didn’t make  _ any  _ sense, he didn’t under- _

_ One of the shouts tapered off into a squeal, and that was the last sound Cisco heard come out of their mouth. The taller figure stood up, carrying the smaller one, and Cisco covered his mouth with his hands on instinct even though he knew that they wouldn’t be able to hear him in the vibe. _

_ What was going on what was going on what was going on- _

Cisco snapped out of the vibe and looked down at his hands, studying them for a moment to make sure that he was  _ really  _ back in the present.

What had he just seen?


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live."--Norman Cousins

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter took forever to produce, but I hope you all like it!
> 
> Warnings for mentions of blood, torture, kidnapping, and detailed discussions of death.

Dante rubbed xyr eyes and yawned, stretching xyr arms above xyr head and cracking xyr back. Xe was exhausted-xe’d been up all night in secret, searching for leads on Cisco and Armando. God, this was tiring. Dante never regretted xyr silent promise to xyrself to do anything to find xyr siblings (except for when-no. That was behind xem now. It was fine, _it was fine),_ but sometimes late at night xe did wonder if the police and xyr parents had been right when they said that Cisco and Armando were dead. Gone.

Dante growled to xyrself. Dammit, now wasn’t the time to think about that. Greta had promised she would help xem look for a new source today, even if she had grumbled about it the whole time. Apparently, she didn’t approve of doing things that would potentially get Dante hurt.

In response, Dante threatened to move the remote so she wouldn’t be able to watch those cartoons she loved so much, and she gave in.

Greta had started offering to scout out potential informants for Dante after they had met because of the Incident, which definitely was _not_ the main cause of Dante’s nightmares, _shut up Greta._ Apparently she didn’t want xem ending up in a basement again with only a large rusty spike as a weapon, the threat of being stabbed the only thing standing between him and… And...

Dante’s phone buzzed and xe picked it up, sighing when xe saw that it was a text from xyr own phone-Greta must’ve been back.

“Alright,” xe said out loud as xyr phone buzzed again, although this time the text mostly contained several angry emoji faces, standing up and heading downstairs, “I’m coming, sheesh.”

A cool breeze tickled xyr ear in response, and Dante blew a raspberry at the blur in the corner of xyr vision out of sheer spite.

* * *

“So,” Handler Felicity said as she peered down at Cisco curiously with her eyes wide and inquisitive behind her glasses, “Hartley told me you like building things? Do we have a budding engineer on our hands?”

Handler Rathaway looked up from his new weapon, one eyebrow raised. “Felicity, stop bothering Carlos,” he sighed. “And I’d hardly call him ‘budding’.”

Cisco hugged his knees tightly to his chest. He didn’t like them watching him, but Caitlin had told him to go sit where Hartley could keep an eye on him while he did some research and ran some tests on the new weapon. He might even have some fun doing it since they were working on figuring out how the boomerang worked, according to her. Cisco was positive that his definition of fun was different than a Doctor’s.

“Oh?” Handler Felicity looked even more interested in him at that. Too interested. Cisco shivered.

“You remember the cold gun, right?” Handler Rathaway said a little bit absently, flipping the boomerang over in his hands and frowning deeply at it in frustration. Cisco hoped that he didn’t decide to take that frustration out on the nearest Asset-which would be himself.

And what did Handler Rathaway mean, ‘remember the cold gun’? Cisco’s eyes flickered between the two Handlers for a second before he suddenly realized where he had seen the new Handler before. She had been in his vibe, the one of Barry’s wound from the cold gun. The gun that he had built. No, no, no, she was going to be so mad at him, she was going to be so _mad_ and she was going to-she was going to punish him for hurting her Asset without her permission, she was going to-

“Of course,” Handler Felicity replied with a nod, craning her neck to watch the other Handler work over her shoulder. “What about it?”

“Three guesses as to who built it.” Handler Rathaway seemed to be enjoying watching the gears in Handler Felicity’s brain turn. Cisco tilted his head to one side. “I’ll give you a hint-they’re in this room.”

Handler Felicity whipped around to fully stare at Cisco. _“You_ built the cold gun?!”

Cisco nodded shyly, chewing on his lower lip. “Yes Ma’am.” He couldn’t _lie_ to her, not to a Handler. “I was the one who built it, Ma’am.”

“That’s”-Cisco braced himself for any of the hundreds of possible things she could have said, only to be completely taken off guard by what actually came out of her mouth-“incredible!”

“It-it is, Ma’am?” He blinked at her in confusion as he chewed on his already slightly bloody lower lip.

“Did you just build it, or did you design it too?” The Handler’s eyes were wide and bright. Cisco cringed back with a squeak. “How many times did you have to rebuild it before you got it the way you wanted? What about improvements, do you think you could’ve made any that you didn’t? Did you _plan_ for it to end up in Leonard Snart’s hands? Why did you build it? What-”

“Felicity,” Handler Rathaway interrupted loudly, “you’re scaring him.”

Cisco whimpered and folded in on himself even more. Show no fear, show no weakness, that was what Eiling had taught him. Show nothing to his masters. Nothing to try to trick them into thinking that he was human, because that was a lie, and if Cisco lied to his masters, to his _owners,_ then he would need to be punished. Severely. Cisco was not a person. He was a weapon. He did _not_ show weakness or fear or any other human emotion.

He was not a person. He did not show fear. He-

“Sorry, sorry, I didn’t mean to. I was just wondering.” She cut herself off, and the there was a long, uncomfortable silence that was only broken by Cisco’s sniffling.

“She didn’t mean to,” Handler Rathaway told him softly. “It’s okay. You’re okay. We’re not going to hurt you here, remember? You already had your, er, ‘punishment’ for making the cold gun. It’s alright.”

“Punishment?” Handler Felicity squawked, turning on her heel to gape at Handler Rathaway. “Hartley, he’s-”

“It wasn’t _really_ a punishment,” Handler Rathaway hissed in a low voice. “It’s just-that’s what he’s used to, okay? He thinks that we’re his _masters.”_ Cisco was more than a little bit confused by the obvious disgust in his voice. “He doesn’t believe us when we tell him that we’re not going to hurt him. So I told him that his punishment was to help me figure out a way to stop the cold gun if Snart comes back. How much of a monster do you think I am?”

“Well, he said _punishment,”_ Felicity muttered. She still sounded angry, which made Cisco nervous. “That doesn’t exactly make me think warm fuzzy thoughts.”

“Please don’t fight, Masters,” Cisco whimpered. When Handlers fought, they always took out their frustration with each other on their Assets. Cisco knew he’d have to stay still and take it, but maybe if he stopped them from fighting with each other before they could start hitting him… “Please, I didn’t mean to do anything wrong, please don’t yell, please don’t fight, please.”

“We’re not fighting,” Handler Rathaway said, forcing himself to relax a little bit. “There was just a little bit of a misunderstanding. You didn’t do anything, I promise. We’re not going to hurt you.”

“Hartley’s bark is bigger than his bite,” Handler Felicity agreed, looking down at Cisco. She coughed awkwardly and rubbed her hands together for a second. “So… Do you want to take a look at our boomerang problem? Get your genius little mind working at it?”

Cisco blinked and looked at Handler Rathaway for directions. Handler Rathaway was his official Handler, wasn’t he? Even of the new woman was a Handler too, Handler Rathaway had superiority. “Handler Rathaway, Sir? Do I have permission, Sir?”

“You don’t need my permission,” the Handler dismissed. “And you don’t have to help us work on it, but if you want to, we could use your help.”

“R-really?” Cisco chewed on the inside of his cheek. He wanted to work on it-he wanted to please the masters but he also really, really wanted to find out how the new weapon worked, how it ticked and if he could make one like it for the Handlers to use and if he could take it apart and put it back together again or any other number of things. Cisco _liked_ working on projects, he liked building things and disassembling and reassembling them and then making a copy from scratch and drawing up designs. Of course, he couldn’t let the Handlers know that. They wouldn’t let him do _anything_ that gave him joy.

“If you want to. We aren’t going to make you. I promise,” Handler Felicity added. “You can say no. Or yes. It’s your choice.”

The other Handler elbowed her and held out the boomerang to Cisco for a second, a hint of a smile making his lips twist up as the teenager took it in his hands and turned it over. It was lightweight, and if Cisco closed his eyes and took a deep breath it made his hands tickle and feel funny. He didn’t like it, and he dropped it fast.

As soon as the boomerang clattered to the floor, Cisco cringed. Too loud, too loud, too _Disobedient._ He braced himself for a slap as Handler Rathway stood up, but instead of hitting him the Handler just bent over and picked up the boomerang.

“I’m sorry,” Cisco whimpered. “I didn’t mean to, I promise, it was a mistake, I really didn’t mean to, it was an accident, I promise. I promise. I promise.”

“You’re not in trouble. It was a little mistake, that’s okay,” Handler Rathaway said. He set the boomerang back on the table. “Why did you drop it?” His eyes lit up behind his glasses. “Is it because of it way it’s humming?”

“I-yes, Sir,” Cisco answered nervously. He kneaded his hands together, knees still pressed up against his chest. “It was an accident, Sir, I promise.”

“I believe you,” Handler Rathaway promised. “I said you weren’t in trouble and I meant it.” He tapped a fingernail against the boomerang, clicking his tongue a little. “Hmm.”

Something about it was giving him a weird feeling deep in his gut, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on _why._ It was probably nothing.

* * *

Cisco sat in his so-called closet, chewing on his sleeve.

He kept thinking about the STAR Labs facility. About the new Handler (he wondered if she was going to be permanent). About how Joe had brought him back to that facility but hadn’t left him there. About how strange the weird new masters were. About everything.

What if these masters really were different?

Of course they were masters, and of course they were going to punish and hurt and yell at him, but that didn’t mean that they couldn’t be different. Maybe they would give him more chances to be Good. Maybe their punishments would be different. Maybe they wouldn’t beat him so harshly or put him in the Pit since according to Barry and Handler Rathaway they didn’t even have one.

Maybe these masters had such different Rules that he somehow hadn’t broken any yet.

Cisco remembered the Rules from Before, even if he wasn’t supposed to-things like ‘no spoiling your dinner’ and ‘be in bed by eight thirty on a school night and nine on a weekend’ and ‘don’t tease your brothers’ and-and a hundred other things.

He _knew_ he wasn’t supposed to remember any of that. But he did. He did. He did. He shouldn’t but he did and that-that was a bad thing.

_(Cisco made himself small, looking up at his Mama nervously. “Am I in trouble?”_

_“No,_ mi hijo, _of course not,” she sighed. “Those boys shouldn’t have done that, and you did a very good job standing up to them, okay?” She kissed his forehead. “Principal Sanders was wrong to yell at you. You did very well.”_

_“Is ‘Mando okay?” Cisco asked nervously._

_“He’ll be alright. He’s at the park with Dante.” His Mama sighed. “I’m sure it’s nothing he hasn’t heard before, but…” She cupped Cisco’s face in her hands, kneeling down. “How’s your nose?”_

_“Hurts a lot.” He brightened a little. “But I hit Aaron really hard for it!”_

_“I’m proud of you.” She stood up and ruffled his hair. “I’ll get you some ice for your face back home. I can’t believe they didn’t give you any…” She trailed off, muttering to herself too fast and too quiet for Cisco to properly catch. He’d always had abnormally good hearing, but… “There’s ice cream at home, too. For my brave boy.”)_

Eiling beat him so many times for remembering Before. For crying for his Mama. For asking for his Papa. For begging to see Dante. Pleading to be allowed to go to Armando’s funeral, only to be told that his family wouldn’t want to see him again since it was his own fault that Armando was dead in the first place. Of course his family wouldn’t want him back. They wouldn’t want him if they knew what a freak he was. What a monster he was.

Eiling had said that he was _lucky_ to be an Asset. Most people would put him down for killing an innocent person with his powers. That he deserved to die for it, but Eiling was merciful and would let him stay alive. (Even if Cisco begged him to kill him, _it hurts, it hurts, wanna die-)_

No. No. Don’t think about that, stop thinking about that, think about something else instead, anything else except that-

Cisco’s mind fell on his vibe from earlier that night.

He hadn’t told any of the Handlers about it, and he hadn’t dared to approach the Supervisors or the Doctor. Apparently the Supervisors had been punishing Barry, because he came back to talk to Handler Felicity with a sad expression and a new slump to his shoulders. Cisco had hoped that he hadn’t been punished too painfully.

The vibe.

Cisco’s fingers clenched a little. He could’ve _sworn_ that he recognized one of the people in the vibe, he really could’ve sworn… Maybe… Maybe he could try to vibe it again. Try to see if he really did remember them. But vibing something without a Handler’s permission would be trouble. Big trouble. If the masters found out about it-

No, no, Cisco couldn’t think like that. He had to know. He had to know. He had to. If the person that he had seen really _was_ someone from Before, Cisco had to know. He just had to. Cisco could take whatever punishment the Handlers decided to dish out if it meant he learned who it was.

But he didn’t know what had triggered the vibe, what had caused him to see those exact events-he didn’t know _anything_ about the context of what he had seen, he didn’t know if it was something from the past, from the present, something that could possibly happen in the future. Trying to figure out what had caused the vibe. He swallowed thickly, closing his eyes and remembering what Eiling’s scientists had taught him to do.

Focus. Focus on his heartbeat, on the natural humming in his bones, on his breathing, on anything internal. Push on that little barrier that held him back from his powers. Keep pushing. Keep trying. Keep working on it. _Do better, Asset 005, I know you can do better than that-_

Cisco gasped a little, his head snapping back and something tickling at the back of his nose as he lurched forward, fingers digging into his knees.

_Dark, dark, dark, everything was dark, fear fear fear please don’t let me die here please don’t let me die here I want my Mama please don’t let me die here-_

_No. Cisco took a deep breath and opened his eyes. Those weren’t his emotions. That wasn’t his fear. Of course he was terrified, but-differently. More afraid of what the masters were going to do to him when they found out about this. Not of dying alone in the dark._

_“You don’t want to come near me,” a voice said, and_ that _was the same voice that Cisco had recognized. They sounded_ terrified. _“You come near me and I’ll stab you with this. I swear I’ll do it. I swear. You wanna take a chance with that,_ pendejo? _I swear to god I’ll do it.”_

 _“That spike’s covered in rust,” someone else remarked, although they sounded a little wary. “Do_ you _want to get tetanus?”_

_As Cisco’s eyes adjusted, he saw that there was a figure slumped against the wall of… A basement? An attic? A cell? Somewhere dark and cold. The figure-that was the one whose voice Cisco had recognized, and a little bit of hope flared in his chest as he leaned forward-was holding what looked like a long curved object. A nail, maybe. Something like that. Cisco had identified plenty of objects in the dark as part of his ‘training’ at the hands of Eiling, but nails hadn’t been one of them._

_“I’ll take the risk,” they panted, tightening their grip on the nail-thing. “I’m willing to risk getting tetanus, but are_ you _gonna risk getting close to me while I’m holding this?”_

_Cisco moved closer, squinting. They’d been hit over the head fairly recently, judging by the dark dried blood that was crusted to their face, but Cisco could see that both of their dark eyes were glaring at the person on the other side of the room. It wasn’t the same person who had kidnapped them, or whatever it was that Cisco had seen in the first vibe, but if the two visions really were connected then they were probably working together to keep the person from Before trapped here._

_“You shouldn’t have gotten involved, kid,” the person sighed. “You can hold me off for now, but my, ah, friend, who you met upstairs, is already starting to test his boundaries.”_

_“Yeah? Then you tell your friend_ _that he’s gonna stay the hell away from me unless he wants this nail through his eye, get it?” Cisco was sure he wasn’t imagining the fear in the Person From Before’s tone._

_“Suit your-”_

Cisco lurched out of the vibe, heart hammering inside of his chest. He felt sick and feverish all over, like he’d been running for too long, too fast and too hard and too-too _everything._ Cisco retched, almost throwing up in his mouth and managing not to out of sheer willpower combined with practice. Eiling hated it when he threw up after vibes. He said that it made Cisco dirtier and it made a mess and making a mess was punishable. So, so punishable.

Cisco swallowed thickly, tasting bile. The Handlers were going to be so upset with him. Vibing without permission, almost making a big mess, being a Disobedient Asset… All punishable.

It hadn’t even been worth it.

* * *

Cisco was still waiting for the blow to fall even as he chewed on his sleeve (Joe had given him _new_ clothes! Warm and soft and still smelling like the dryer. _New)_ in the center room of the STAR Labs facility the next day. The night before had gone almost the same to the first night, with the exception of a different kind of food for dinner and Joe waiting in his room until he fell asleep. Or at least until he managed to pretend to be asleep convincingly enough to make the Supervisor lower his guard and leave so Cisco could safely migrate back to the ‘closet’. He’d managed to get back in the bed before morning came so the Supervisor and Iris wouldn’t know.

Lying _and_ vibing without permission. Both punishable, and both things that Cisco had done recently within a few short hours the night before. He was going to be in _so much trouble_ when they found out.

“Yeah, I mean, something weird happened with his eyes for a second,” Barry said with a shrug. Cisco hugged his knees to his chest, keeping an eye on the new Handler woman. He didn’t trust her one bit-she kept looking at him when she thought he wasn’t watching.

Doctor Caitlin raised an eyebrow, frowning slightly. “Weird thing?”

“Yeah, everything went red.” Barry gestured to his own eyes. “The irises of his eyes turned, like, scarlet.”

“You were right,” Handler Felicity murmured, looking at Doctor Caitlin.

Handler Rathaway glanced at her for a split second. “Right about what? Your color theory thing?”

Doctor Caitlin nodded and turned back to Barry. “What happened next? Did he attack you?”

“Nope,” Barry said, shaking his head. Cisco’s eyes fell on the way he was clenching and unclenching one of his fists. “The next thing I knew Bivolo was gone.” He jumped to his feet and started to walk away, passing by Cisco on his way. “Look, obviously his powers didn’t work on me, so-”

“It was stupid for you to go out there alone,” Handler Rathaway huffed. Doctor Caitlin nodded in agreement, crossing her arms. Cisco made himself small as she spoke.

“You take too many risks! What if Bivolo’s powers did something else to you? What if he managed to do something to you while you were incapacitated? You can’t do things like this, Barry, not when you _know_ that you have us to help you!” Doctor Caitlin’s voice grew louder and louder and Cisco cringed. Barry _did_ deserve it for talking back and going against Orders the way that he had, but it was still hard to watch and listen to. “As fast as you are, that’s gonna catch up with you!”

Barry turned around on his heel, eyes narrowed into slits, and spat, “Caitlin, I’m not Ronnie. You gotta stop treating me like I am.”

Doctor Caitlin’s eyes went wide, and the room grew silent as Barry stomped off. Cisco whimpered. No, no, no, no, now Barry was going to be punished, he was bad and he was going to be beaten and whipped and pounded into a bloody pulp for his disobedience. Handler Rathaway made a growling sound and took off after Barry, making Cisco sniffle quietly. He knew what was going to happen when the Handler caught up with him.

He knew. He knew. He knew.

“Barry,” Hartley spat, grabbing the speedster’s shoulder and pushing him against the wall. “What the fuck was that?!”

Barry curled his hands into fists, grinding his teeth. “Nothing. Caitlin just gets on my nerves sometimes.”

“Bullshit. She’s one of your best friends and you didn’t even apologize to her! What the hell, Barry?” He narrowed his eyes. “You’re _sure_ that you’re not feeling any affects from what Bivolo did to you?”

“I already told you, I feel fine,” Barry snapped. “What does it matter to you, anyways?”

Hartley frowned. Something was wrong, something was very, very wrong. “You’re my friend” _-I think-_ “and you just yelled at my best friend and threw the death of her fiancé in her face. You’re obviously not _fine.”_

“Oh, please,” Barry hissed, stepping forward as his eyes… Flashed red? Must have been a trick of the light. “We aren’t friends. You constantly nag about every little thing! Can’t you see that I’m _trying_ to do _good?_ Things would go a _lot_ faster if you were gone. The only reason that you’re still around is because you’re Wells’s favorite. Half of the people in this city think you’re sleeping with him, and I wouldn’t exactly be surprised if that were true. Why else would you stick around after the particle accelerator explosion if all you’re going to do is make demands?”

Hartley took a step backwards, face pale. He swallowed thickly. “I haven’t- _I wouldn’t-”_

Barry turned around and sped off, leaving Hartley staring at the place where he had been with wide eyes.

* * *

“I knew it,” Handler Rathaway said, arms crossed. “I _knew_ Oliver Queen was the Arrow.”

“No you didn’t,” Doctor Caitlin replied, rolling her eyes. “You had no idea.”

“Well, I had a list, and he was on it.”

Cisco watched the two of them argue, whimpering a little. There was a new Master-a Supervisor, most likely. He was tall and he had wide shoulders and he was standing with his arms crossed rolling his eyes at Handler Rathaway and Doctor Caitlin and exchanging looked with Handler Felicity.

Cisco eyed the first Supervisor out of the corner of his eye, wondering if he had permission to go over to the New Supervisor and show that he was a Good Asset. The old Supervisor wasn’t looking at him, so maybe… Maybe…

Swallowing nervously past the lump in his throat, Cisco crept over to the new Supervisor and knelt down beside him while looking up fearfully. He knew that he had to guard the Supervisor, that was nothing new, but maybe this Supervisor would want him to do something else too… Expose his throat or his chest or his back or somewhere else easy to hurt and easy to use to punish. Cisco didn’t dare _ask,_ but he did sneak a small glance out of the corner of his eye to see if the old Supervisor was getting angry at him for moving to the new Master’s side.

The new Supervisor looked down at him and blinked. “Kid?”

Cisco stiffened, snapping his knees together and straightening his back before bowing his head. “Yes Sir?”

“Sir-my name’s Diggle, kiddo. John Diggle.” He crouched down a little as he spoke softly and carefully, moving away from Cisco before holding out his hand like he wanted Cisco to take it. “Felicity told me about you. Carlos, right?”

Cisco shook his head slowly, eyeing the Supervisor’s hand with worry. “My name is anything you want it to be, Sir.”

“...Okay.” The Supervisor let his hand drop.

“Carlos, why don’t you come over here and stand by me?” The Doctor called. She’d stopped arguing with Handler Rathaway, which Cisco was grateful for. It meant that there was no more anger for either of them to take out on him later.

Cisco scrambled to his feet, hoping that the new Supervisor understood. He had to have loyalty to his first Masters, after all. It would be the same if Eiling came back to get him from this Supervisor-Eiling had been his Master first, and Cisco would always, always, _always_ have to be loyal to him above all others. Or else.

“Have you found Barry yet?” Handler Rathaway asked, and Cisco flinched. Barry was being bad, so bad, he was being a terrible rogue Asset and they were going to kill him. Handler Rathaway and Handler Felicity had asked him to help them build something to stop Barry, but after seeing how much he was shaking and after he started crying they’d told him to wait in the Cortex (Cisco was starting to connect that with the main room at the STAR Labs facility) until the weapon was built and ‘until Diggle got there.’

Part of Cisco, the tiny rebellious part that he tried to keep hidden at all times so he wouldn’t be punished, wanted Barry to get away. Wanted Barry to run away and get away and end up far, far, far away from the STAR Labs Facility and far away from Handler Rathaway and far away from Doctor Caitlin and far away from the Supervisor and far away from Joe and far away from Iris. Far away from Handler Felicity. Of course, Cisco would be the one punished for his escape, but it would be worth it.

It would be worth it for Barry to escape. Barry would be free. He was fast, he had powers that would let him get far, far away from the Handlers and Doctors and Supervisors that wanted to hurt him and punish him and use him for his powers. Cisco would take any punishment that they gave him if it meant that Barry would escape.

He’d offered that for Bette, a few times. Offered to take any punishment for her escape if it meant that she got away. Bette had always refused. Always told him that she wouldn’t leave him, she wouldn’t let him stay behind to get hurt by Eiling. He was part of her flock now. Always.

Cisco blinked back tears.

“Got him!” Handler Felicity yelled, throwing her hands up in the air. Cisco flinched at the loud noise, hands coming up to cover his ears, but nobody seemed to notice. “I picked him up on a traffic cam downtown.” She paused and her face went white. “Oh, god.”

* * *

“Eddie,” Iris sighed, tightening her grip on the steering wheel, “both you _and_ the Flash care about protecting this city. You would both give your lives for it. You two are more alike than you think, okay? He is not the bad guy.”

“How do you know so much about him, Iris?” Eddie asked suspiciously.

Iris forced herself to relax a little bit. “I’ve… Spoken to him a few times. Met him.”

“Iris-” Eddie started, but Iris spoke over him.

“I needed to know some things, and then I had to warn him about a criminal-about Tony Woodward-and then it turns out my dad’s new foster kid is different like the Flash is different,” she said all in a rush. “So when I say that I _know_ he’s trustworthy, that I _know_ he wants to help people, it’s the truth. He’s not a bad person.”

“I won’t believe it until I meet him for myself,” Eddie said. “Someone pretending to have powers while running around the city saving people-I thought only Gotham had to deal with this.”

“He’s not _pretending_ to have powers,” Iris frowned. “He really has them. I’ve seen it. There’s no projectors, and no machines, or at least I haven’t seen any. I watched him run up the side of a _building_ so fast he just looked like a bolt of lightning. He’s real, Eddie. He’s out there, and he has powers, and he wants to help people.” She took a deep breath. “If you really want to meet him, then fine. I’ll-I’ll try to contact him through my blog like I did before and see if he wants to meet you.”

Eddie shook his head. “Do you really think a guy who wears a mask and _fakes_ having superpowers is going to want to meet up with a cop?”

“You’d be surprised,” Iris whispered. “He’s a good person, like you are, okay? And don’t worry,” she switched her tone as she teased him, “I’m not falling in love with any mysterious dashing heroes when I’ve got my knight in shining armor right here with me, okay?”

“I always figured you were the knight in this relationship,” Eddie said as he rather reluctantly joined in on the teasing. “I’m the damsel in distress. Or the horse.”

Iris burst out laughing. “You’re the-”

There was a crashing sound of glass, and then Eddie was ripped out of the car and thrown onto the street.

“Eddie!” Iris screamed.

Eddie tumbled, catching himself as gravel nicked his face and scratched at his hands. _What the hell…_ His gun was gone, he knew that even as his hand went down to where it should have been. _No guns on date night,_ Iris’s voice whispered in his ear, chiding. Fuck. He looked up, pushing himself forward on his hands. His heart stopped. “What the hell…”

The Flash was standing there-who else could it have been?-vibrating in place with their arms crossed. “Detective Thawne,” they greeted, voice a low snarl, “I heard you’ve been having some doubts about me. Here I am.”

“I don’t-” Eddie tried to stand, only to get himself knocked down on the ground. He swore and tried to stand again, only to get the same results as the Flash practically body-slammed him.

“Who the hell are you, huh?” The Flash spat, circling closer to Eddie like a shark in the water. “You just come along and think you can have anything you want. What gives you the right? Why do you think you can have Iris? Why do you think you can have _me?_ What do you wanna do with me once you catch me, huh? Cut me open and treat me like some kind of lab rat?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about! I don’t want to cut anybody open!” Eddie wished more than anything that he had his gun. “I want to help people!”

“Then why won’t you let _me_ help people? Help your _girlfriend_ with C-that foster kid? You’re so-” The Flash made another lunge for him, this time swinging in a wide arc in a spray of dirt and gravel just before reaching him. “You’re-everything about you is _infuriating!”_ There was something else, another kind of raw emotion, buried underneath those words, and Eddie tried to listen for it as the Flash continued. “With your arrest counting and your stupid dates that you and your writer girlfriend go on and how you keep listening to m-to people when they tell you about problems-”

Eddie had no idea what was going on, but he was pretty much enclosed by a ring of what looked and sounded like lightning or sparks that the Flash was making as they ran in a tight circle around him. He couldn’t get away, couldn’t get to Iris to try to protect her, couldn’t do _anything._

“Stop!” Iris called, and Eddie wanted to yell for her to get away, to get back in the car and floor it so she wouldn’t get hurt. “Stop it! Get away from him! What’s happening to you?”

“I’m fine,” the Flash hissed, sounding like their mouth was full of gravel. They must’ve been modifying their voice somehow. With a modulator in their suit or something like that. However they were doing it, it was terrifying.

“You are _not_ fine! I know you, I know you’re a hero, so _why_ are you trying to hurt my boyfriend?” Iris demanded. Eddie prayed that she stayed close to the car, prayed that the Flash didn’t turn their attention onto her and decide that a girl who wanted to be a reporter would be less trouble to snuff out than a cop.

“I’m not-” The Flash skidded to a halt and shook their head fast, their head throwing off little yellow sparks as they vibrated. “You don’t know me, Iris. You think that just because you write about me you know who I am, who I _really_ am? You’re _wrong._ You don’t know me. You don’t know _anything_ about me. You don’t know my name.” To Eddie’s horror, they were starting to stalk toward Iris, albeit slowly. “You know _nothing_ about me, Iris.”

While the Flash’s back was turned, Eddie tried to run for them, grab them and pin them and make sure that they couldn’t hurt Iris (please, please, please not Iris, not one of the first actually good things in his life that didn’t happen because of who his dad was, please). He knew it would probably just get him killed, but it would be better to die saving Iris’s life than to live knowing that he had failed to keep her safe.

But the Flash spun around and caught him before he could actually make contact with them, throwing him down against the ground with a snarl that twisted out strangely through their vocal cords. This wasn’t happening via special effects or tricks of the light. This was real. This was a monster.

Something dark colored slammed the Flash off of him, and Eddie took a deep breath as he watched someone advance on his attacker.

* * *

Cisco whimpered as he watched over the cameras-Handler Felicity kept switching back and forth between different ones so they could keep watching Barry fight with the other Asset-as Barry was slammed into the ground, pushed down and shot at in a blur of motion by the other Asset over the grainy feed of the traffic cam.

The other Asset. The Arrow, Cisco was pretty sure he was called. Like how the people at the STAR Labs Facility and at Joe’s house-facility called Barry ‘the Flash’. He whimpered. He knew what was going to happen. The other Asset was going to hurt Barry, hurt him and then drag him back to the facility for execution. This was worse than just simple Disobedience. Far, far worse. Barry had _attacked_ someone, he’d yelled at a Doctor and at a Handler, he’d-

Barry had been bad. So, so very bad.

Bad enough that there was no going back. No amount of begging and groveling for mercy on either of their parts would spare Barry’s life.

Cisco just hoped, praying against all the odds, that he wouldn’t be forced to watch Barry’s death as a punishment. As a lesson.

Eiling had threatened to do that to Bette plenty of times. Kill her as a lesson for Cisco, or vice versa. Torture them until they succumbed. Beat them and burn them and cut them open and a hundred other different painful things. Never stopping until they died.

The punishment for Barry here would be no different than all of those threats, and Cisco knew it. Barry had already been bad before, when he had been Defective and stopped being able to use his powers. This was going to be his Final Strike.

As soon as the Asset brought Barry back to the STAR Labs Facility, Barry was going to die.

And there was absolutely nothing that Cisco could do to stop it from happening.

Maybe, if he was lucky, he would be allowed to say goodbye. He hadn’t had a chance to say goodbye to Bette. He hadn’t had a chance to say goodbye to his family. He hadn’t had a chance to say goodbye to Armando.

Just maybe, he would finally be allowed to say goodbye when someone he loved, someone he _cared_ about, was taken from him.

* * *

Barry groaned a little as Caitlin pressed a cotton swab soaked in isopropyl to one of the cuts on his cheek. “Ow.”

“You’re sure he’s done being angry?” Caitlin asked, looking at Hartley out of the corner of her eye as she dabbed at the grazes a little bit more viciously than she strictly needed to.

Hartley nodded, drumming his fingers against the edge of his tablet. “The test results show that Bivolo’s powers aren’t affecting him anymore, outside of some residual fatigue and probably some hunger from the energy exerted while taking down the Arrow and attacking Detective Thawne.”

“Good,” Caitlin said icily, “then I can properly yell at him.” She set her cotton swab and tongs down and crossed her arms over her chest. “What the _hell,_ Barry? Do you have _any_ idea what you’ve done?”

Barry winced and looked down at the floor. “I know, Caitlin. Trust me, okay? I know.”

“Do you?” She cocked her head dangerously to one side. “I heard what you told Hartley-you were yelling pretty loudly and then I checked the cameras in the hallway. Which was _after_ you yelled at me. And _what_ did you do after that?”

“I… Went to the precinct?” Barry chewed on his lower lip nervously.

“Well, yes,” Caitlin relented, “but you _also_ attacked Eddie. You could’ve seriously hurt or even killed him or Iris!”

“I’d never kill him-either of them!” Barry protested. “No matter how angry I got, I swear to God I’d never kill any of them.”

“Does Eddie know that?” Caitlin asked, and Barry lowered his gaze to the floor. “Does Iris? I believe you wouldn’t kill them, but you weren’t exactly yourself after Bivolo affected you. What if you had seriously hurt them? You’re lucky Eddie didn’t need to go to the hospital, and even though Iris isn’t hurt she’s probably terrified after watching a figure she thought she could trust _assault_ her boyfriend!”

Barry shrank back, closing his eyes. “How am I supposed to apologize to them, both of them, without revealing my identity?”

“Figure it out,” Caitlin answered brusquely. She looked at Hartley. “Anything to add, Hartley?”

“I think you covered most of it.” Hartley didn’t look up from the tablet. Barry realized that he hadn’t looked directly at him _once_ since he’d gotten back from fighting Bivolo. “Aside from one thing.” Hartley took a deep breath through his nose, still not looking up. “I would never, _ever_ sleep with that man. I would rather cut off my own hand. Understood?”

Barry ducked his head down. “Okay,” he whispered in a tiny voice that cracked midway through the word. “I get it. I don’t-I don’t really think that, you know. I never did. It just… Came out for some reason. I’m sorry.”

“I can’t forgive you yet,” Hartley replied shortly. “Not yet.”

“Alright.” Barry looked around and tried to find a way to change the subject. “Where’s Carlos?”

“With Diggle. I didn’t want to scare him by allowing him to watch me patch you up.” Caitlin’s voice was still edged with disapproval.

“How’s he doing?” Barry fidgeted nervously with his hands. God, if he’d set the kid back _even more,_ he’d probably never be able to forgive himself.

“Better now that you’re back. Kind of.” At Barry’s look, Caitlin elaborated. “The kid was panicking while you and the Arrow-Oliver-were fighting, and while you were attacking Eddie. I’m pretty sure once he realized that the Arrow wasn’t fighting to kill you, he calmed down some, and he seems to be all panicked out for now. But he keeps asking to see you, and the more we refuse the more nervous he’s probably going to get.”

Barry didn’t really know what to say to that. God, he’d fucked up. He’d fucked up big time. “Am I okay enough to see him now?”

Hartley gave him a once-over. “Probably. You might want to put a shirt on, though. He reacted badly to seeing you injured last time, and while we can’t cover up the marks on your face…”

Barry nodded, dressing himself quickly as Hartley moved to stick his head out of the medbay’s door. “Hey, Carlos? Do you want to come see Barry now? He’s all fixed up.”

A blur of dark hair and an galaxy patterned shirt sped by her and threw itself at Barry, wrapping its arms around his waist and burying its face in his chest. Barry rubbed Carlos’s back a little bit awkwardly, frowning. “Are you okay?”

The kid looked up at him, eyes filling with tears. “Are-are they gonna let you say goodbye before they put you down?”

Hartley almost dropped his tablet, Caitlin choked, and Barry’s eyes went wide with shock. “What-no!” Carlos let out a tiny sob, and Barry rushed to correct himself. “I mean-no, nobody’s getting put down. That’s not how things work here, okay? Caitlin was just patching me up, helping me get _better_ after I got hurt. She helps people, remember? Medic, not a doctor. Not like the people who hurt you.”

Carlos stared at him, trembling a little. “The-the other Supervisor, the new one, s-said-”

“Who?” Barry and Caitlin asked at the same time.

“Diggle, I think,” Hartley answered for them. “Is that right, Carlos?”

He nodded fast. “Yes Handler Rathaway. He-he said that you were not going to be punished, but that he was worried the Arrow-Asset would hurt you badly and I thought that you were gonna die and-”

“No, no, Oliver wouldn’t kill me,” Barry said hastily. “He’s a hero, like me. And he’s not an asset. Neither of us are assets, and you aren’t either. Okay?”

Carlos shook his head, long hair getting in his eyes. Barry wondered if he would be alright with getting a haircut in the near future; he’d panicked last time, so probably not, but maybe if Barry promised to do it at super-speed… The kid gripped Barry’s hands tightly. “I am, I know my place, I promise I know my place. But-but-I saw the other Asset hurt you, and you Disobeyed Orders by fighting back, and I knew that they were going to p-put you d-down so I had to c-come say goodbye.”

“Carlos,” Barry started evenly, before hesitating. It felt shallow and false to promise something while using the name that _they_ had given the kid. To swear something while using a fake name. But it was the only option that he had. “Carlos, I know you’re scared. But I promise, I’m not going to get put down. Ever. These are my friends, and none of them are going to hurt you. I swear on my mom’s grave, alright?”

“You promise you’re not going to get put down like the other bad Assets?” Carlos whispered.

Barry felt like his throat was closing up. “I promise,” he vowed. “Carlos, did you… Did you have to watch other, uh, assets die?”

Carlos looked down at where his hands were holding Barry’s much larger ones. “Th-three of them. There were more that got put down but my old Master only made me watch three of them. I-I deserved it, though. I needed to be taught a lesson about what would happen if I Disobeyed too many Orders and got too out of line.”

“Did you know their names?” Barry asked him softly. He didn’t even notice that Caitlin was leaning forward on her toes to hear the kid’s answer, or the door that closed softly behind Hartley as the other man left. He was entirely focused on Carlos’s answer.

Carlos (it felt so _wrong_ to call him that, it felt so, so wrong, but what else _could_ they call him?) shook his head slowly, still clinging to Barry. “No,” he whispered. “But one of them was nice. Really really nice.” He started crying. “He used to give me his food, ‘cause the Master let us stay in the same cell so I could teach him the rules. He used to tease the guards ‘til they’d come in n’ shut him up, but he wouldn’t ever let them hurt me.”

Barry closed his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“They’d take him away and he’d come back all bloody n-” Carlos choked on his own tears and fell silent for a moment, trembling and sniffling softly. “Missing stuff. Hands and fingers and things like that. But they always grew back. Ei-my old Master made me watch them shoot him in the head until he stopped moving.” He took a few ragged deep breaths. “‘N there was a girl. She-she had gills ‘n webbed fingers ‘n really nice hair and I-I watched them burn her alive.”

“Dear God,” Caitlin murmured, but Carlos went on like he hadn’t even heard her.

“There was-there was another Asset, and she-” His eyes went wide and unfocused. “She had a weird accent. They made her and then they killed her, just like that. Kept hitting her and she kept begging them to stop, said she vol-volunteered to do this, they couldn’t-couldn’t kill her, but they just kept-they just kept-”

“Enough,” Caitlin said firmly, and the kid flinched, wrapping his arms around Barry’s waist like he was trying to protect him. Barry blinked back tears, holding Carlos close to him. “Barry, why don’t you wait in here while I get Joe? Carlos, come with me, okay?”

Carlos gave Barry one last squeeze and jumped away from him, landing on the floor and obediently following Caitlin out of the medbay. Barry closed his eyes and leaned back, gripping at his own hair.

He really, really, _really_ wished that he could get drunk.

* * *

“Captain Singh approved the task force,” Eddie said, voice level. Iris closed her eyes and looked down at the floor of Jitters. “You wanted me to believe that the Flash was real. Now I do.”

Iris’s eyes flickered up to look at the small, still-healing cut on Eddie’s forehead. The Flash hadn’t hurt him too badly, and the injury probably wouldn’t even scar, but… That didn’t mean she felt any better about it. Eddie looked at her expectantly, but Iris didn’t say anything.

“I believe he’s dangerous, and I am gonna take them in. To get them the help that they need. They’re unstable-you saw how they acted last night, Iris. I believe that they’re _trying_ to help people, but they’re going about it in the wrong way, and they’re doing far more harm than good.” Eddie sighed. “How do you feel about that?”

Iris closed her eyes for a moment before forcing herself to smile. “All I know is how I feel about you.” Eddie’s eyes flickered with hope, and Iris wrapped her arms around his neck, pressing her nose into his shoulder before pulling away. “Barry’s here,” she said, and something in Eddie’s face changed a little. “Said he heard what happened last night and wanted to make sure you were okay. We were gonna go to the precinct together if you hadn’t dropped by.”

Eddie’s gaze moved behind her and he smiled a little bit. “I think he’s a little bit preoccupied with his friends. I don’t want to interrupt.”

Iris kissed his nose. “He likes you, you know. Barry’s always been a little bit jealous of people who get close to me. I think it’s part of growing up together, being best friends. He doesn’t want to be replaced.” She gave Eddie another kiss. “But he likes you. He won’t mind if we go over there.”

Eddie let Iris take his hand and lead him over, smiling a little bit at the way Barry’s eyes lit up. His suspicions that Barry had a bit of a crush on Iris were almost a hundred percent confirmed at this point, but to his surprise Eddie couldn’t really find it in him to mind. As long as Barry understood that right now Iris and Eddie were together and didn’t try to split them up, it didn’t really matter. Did it?

“Hey, Eddie, Iris,” Barry greeted, and the blond woman next to him made a small sound of recognition at the back of her throat. “You two remember Felicity, don’t you?”

Eddie nodded while Iris smiled, inclining her head. The man standing next to Barry, who _had_ to have been Oliver Queen, nodded back. “It’s nice to see you again. And it’s nice to meet you,” he added. “I’m Eddie. Which-which you probably already knew.”

Felicity grabbed Queen’s arm and reached for Iris’s hand. “We have to hit the road soon-Iris, do you think we could get some java to go?”

Iris nodded and let go of Eddie’s hand as she took Felicity’s, letting the other woman drag her and her… Boyfriend? Whatever Oliver Queen was to Felicity, she was pulling him away, leaving only Barry and Eddie at the table.

“Iris told me you heard what happened,” Eddie said when the silence between them became too uncomfortable to bear. He couldn’t help but notice the way that Barry kept looking back and forth between Eddie and where Iris was chatting with Felicity and Queen.

Barry nodded fast, blushing hard. “Yeah, I-sorry. That must’ve been… Really scary.”

Eddie frowned a little. Why did Barry sound _guilty?_ Eddie had to have been mistaken, but… No. He had to be mistaken. “Yeah, I guess so.”

They lapsed back into silence, and Barry fiddled with his napkin. “Do you really think that the Flash is a bad guy?”

“No,” Eddie answered honestly after a moment of hesitation. “I think they’re just a person trying to make a difference and going about it the wrong way. The way that they were acting last night when they attacked me… It didn’t match up with any of their other behavior. They need to be taken down, I do believe that, but I also think they need help. This has to be a huge strain, and eventually they’re going to slip up. Someone could get hurt, and the task force will be there to take them down when it happens. For the Flash’s own good.”

Barry’s hands stilled. “Did Singh approve that? The task force?”

“He did. Didn’t seem to happy about it, but…” Eddie sighed and shrugged a little bit.

“Good for you,” Barry said, looking down at the table before lifting his head up and staring Eddie dead in the eyes. “Look, Eddie, I-”

“We’re back,” Felicity announced, and Barry closed his mouth so fast Eddie didn’t even see it move. She hugged Barry and then turned around and did the same thing to Eddie, much to his surprise. “And now we’re leaving again. See you guys around sometime soon, okay?”

“I’ll try to head up to Starling City more often,” Barry promised.

Felicity snapped her fingers. “Oh! And send me updates on how Carlos is doing, okay?”

“Will do.” Barry waved as Felicity and Queen left. Iris wrapped her arms around Eddie’s waist from behind, pressing her face into the spot in between his shoulderblades. Barry’s smile grew a little bit more strained and painful.

“Carlos is that foster kid Joe is taking care of, right?” Eddie asked. Iris had told him something about an abuse case, which Eddie had been confused about. Joe didn’t have to tell him everything, of course, but when it came to work stuff, wasn’t he supposed to? And why hadn’t Eddie been told about the case? He was going along with things for now, since it involved a kid’s safety, but he was more than a little bit suspicious.

Why did Eddie get the feeling that he wasn’t being told everything more and more often?

A brief look of panic appeared on Barry’s face before disappearing. “Yeah. I think you’d like him,” he said truthfully. Eddie seemed to like everyone. _Everyone except the Flash,_ Barry’s subconscious reminded him. “He’s a good kid. Smart.”

“Eddie, why don’t you come over for dinner at our house tomorrow night?” Iris said, and Eddie stiffened a little. Dating Iris wasn’t really new anymore, but that didn’t mean that dating his partner’s daughter wasn’t still kind of weird. “You can meet Carlos, Dad can make something so I don’t have to suffer through your cooking for another night”-Eddie bristled indignantly even though he knew she was right about the quality of his cooking-“and Barry won’t have to eat alone in his apartment.”

“Maybe I should invite Hartley and Caitlin,” Barry suggested. “Just-just so it won’t be awkward.”

“Sure.” Iris smiled. “Unless-will that overwhelm Carlos?”

“Shit, maybe.” Barry’s nervous half-smile vanished. “But if it does, he can always go up to his room.”

Iris beamed wider. “Great, invite them then.” She kissed Eddie’s cheek. “It’ll be fun.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I avoid looking forward or backward, and try to keep looking upward.” – Charlotte Brontë

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is...surprisingly light on the angst and all of the important things that happen have very little to do with the actual episode itself. I don't even think there are any real major warnings, but if you think otherwise then let me know and I'll warn for anything you want.

This was not fun.

“The dinner isn’t until tonight,” Iris tsked. “Stop acting so grumpy.”

Barry groaned and covered his face with his hands. “Is it too late to cancel? It’s gonna be so _awkward,_ Iris!”

As it turned out, Caitlin and Hartley couldn’t come. Hartley had provided Barry with a suspiciously flimsy excuse about a date, while Caitlin told him that she was going to be too busy helping a friend of hers that she hadn’t seen in months move into an apartment across town. Apparently in return she was providing Caitlin and a plus one with free tickets to one of her magic shows.

Barry had told her to have fun and hung up.

“It’s not going to be awkward,” Iris dismissed. “Dad and the kid will be there to stop it from being too weird, alright? Well, Dad might just accidentally make it more weird, but trust me, we’ll tone it down.”

“Fine,” Barry grumbled. He stiffened a little bit. “Oh, shit. I have to talk to Carlos about something, okay? I totally forgot.”

“What is it?” Iris finished putting on her lipstick and leaned back against the wall.

“It’s about Eddie. I don’t want him to freak out-Carlos, I mean. He’s been hurt really badly, and, well…” Barry shrugged a little bit. “I want him to know that if he gets overwhelmed he can always go back upstairs to his room without asking for permission or anything like that. He can just go if he needs to.”

“Of course.” Iris watched him leave. She had a weird feeling in her gut. Lately, Barry had been having that effect on her. It was like he was only telling her a part of the truth, not all of it. Like she was being lied to. Iris got the same feeling from her dad, too. There was something going on that she didn’t know about, and she was determined to get to the bottom of it.

* * *

“Hey, kiddo,” Barry said, leaning against the doorframe. Cisco looked up from his Legos-Iris had let him _keep_ them! She’d put most of them away, but he got to hold onto a handful of them to keep tinkering with on and off. “How are you doing?”

Cisco fiddled with his Legos. “Fine?”

He hoped that was the right answer to Barry’s question. It seemed to be, because Barry smiled at him. “That’s good. I just came up here to talk to you about something.”

Cisco stiffened. “Did-did I do something wrong? I promise I didn’t mean to, I really really promise I didn’t mean to, I-”

“No, no, you didn’t do anything wrong, I just-I have some more rules to explain to you, okay?” Barry flashed over to the bed and sat down, smiling genuinely when Cisco didn’t flinch away (even if it _was_ because he was frozen with fear). He hated calling them ‘rules’, but… It was the best way to get across to the kid that he needed to do or not do something.

“More Rules?” Cisco asked cautiously.

Barry nodded. “I realized I forgot to explain them to you before, okay? It’s not your fault for not knowing them. The first rule is that you can’t talk about-about me being a metahuman around Iris or anybody except Joe, Caitlin, Dr. Wells, and Hartley, alright? She, um, she doesn’t know that I’m a metahuman, even if she knows _you’re_ one, and it’s safer for her if she doesn’t know about it.”

“No talking about Asset things around Miss Iris,” Cisco translated. “Or-or anybody except for Handler Rathaway, Doctor Caitlin, Master Wells, or Master Joe.”

 _“Just_ Iris and _just_ Hartley and _just_ Caitlin and-” Barry broke off, shaking his head and sighing as he gave up. “Yeah, you got it right. That’s the only big rule I forgot to tell you, but I just want you to know that Eddie and Iris are going to be having dinner with me, you, and Joe tonight. If you start getting overwhelmed you don’t have to wait for permission, you can just run up to your room and hide until you feel better. There won’t be any punishment for it.”

At the reminder of punishment, Cisco flinched. “I-I talked about Asset things around Iris before, is Master Joe going to punish me for it? I don’t-I didn’t know, I’m sorry, I didn’t know, I really didn’t know, I wouldn’t have done it if I knew.”

“No, no, you’re not in trouble. Joe won’t _ever_ punish you, but _especially_ not for doing something you didn’t know was a bad thing,” Barry emphasized.

Cisco squeezed the Lego anxiously, whimpering. “I didn’t mean to.”

“I know you didn’t. Joe knows you didn’t. You’re safe. Nobody is going to punish you.” Barry noticed the Lego. “Do you want to play with your Legos? Iris said you two had a lot of fun together building things.”

Cisco nodded shyly. “I made weapons but she said maybe we should stay away from doing that so we built houses instead.”

Barry blinked. “I-yeah, yeah, let’s stay away from building Lego weapons. But we can build houses again. Or boats. Or spaceships.”

“Spaceships?” Cisco brightened. He was around Barry, another Asset, so it was probably okay to show how excited he was at the thought of building a spaceship. “Would it-would it have to work, or could it just be-be a design?”

“It doesn’t have to work,” Barry assured him. “I promise. Nothing you build has to work. The point isn’t to build things that work, the point is to have fun.”

Cisco ducked his head, blushing a little. “Miss Iris put the box of Legos in the closet above the clothes.” Cisco hadn’t even noticed the shelf up there until Iris had decided to use to store the box. “I-I don’t know if I can reach it, but… Can you get it?”

Barry smiled at him. “Of course. We can play with them until Iris and Eddie come over tonight, since Joe doesn’t like me in the kitchen while he’s cooking. He says I eat faster than he can cook.”

* * *

By the time Eddie and Iris get there, Cisco and Barry had moved downstairs with their Legos at Barry’s suggestion. They were working on building a large boat together, complete with little Lego people manning it. Cisco had organized all of the little pieces by color first, dividing them up so that he could use specifically the colors that he liked without any of the others getting in the mix, although Barry used those ones. When Barry asked him, he told the older Asset that he didn’t know _why_ he was doing it, but he was.

(Well, he _did_ know-it was because of something from Before, but Cisco wasn’t allowed to remember before. He wasn’t allowed to remember any of what happened before. Not even when it came to Legos and building blocks and a big brother who always organized them by color because he couldn’t stand to have them be mixed together and _wrong.)_

The door opened and Cisco jumped a little, looking up. Iris smiled as she shrugged off her coat, but Cisco was more focused on the fact that she had brought a new person (who he assumed was the new Handler, Eddie) with her.

“It smells great in here,” Iris commented, setting her coat own on the back of a chair as New Handler Eddie did the same thing before standing awkwardly behind her and nodding a little bit to Barry. “Hey, Bar. Hi, Carlos-this is Eddie. Eddie, this is the kid I’ve been telling you about.”

Handler Eddie waved a little, and Cisco blinked at him before lowering his gaze submissively back down to the Legos. Eddie’s hand dropped back down to his side.

Barry stood up and moved to hug Iris and shake Handler Eddie’s hand. “Hey! You’re here!” He looked back at Cisco. “He’s not used to people,” he said to Eddie in a low voice. “He hasn’t even warmed up to Joe and Iris yet, and every time I think I’ve gotten through to him something happens and I mess it up. Don’t take it personally.”

“I won’t,” Handler Eddie promised.

Cisco added a little person to the ship he and Barry had built so that he had something to do with his anxious hands. “It’s nice to meet you, Sir.”

“You don’t have to call me sir,” Handler Eddie said softly, walking over to sit down across from him. He picked up one of the Lego pieces. “You can just call me Eddie. If you really want to be formal you can call me Detective Thawne, but I’d prefer if you called me Eddie.”

“Yes Handler Eddie.” Cisco made a tiny house and then destroyed it. He wasn’t sure what the new Handler wanted, but Barry had said that they had permission to build things that weren’t weapons and Cisco had already done it with Iris and she hadn’t been mad… But this new Handler, Eddie, wasn’t like Iris or Barry. He might not like that they were doing it. “I’ll be good, Sir.”

Handler Eddie winced. “You don’t have to be ‘good’ and you don’t have to call me sir. I told you.”

“Yessir.” Cisco swallowed.

The Handler’s shoulders slumped. “...Okay.”

Cisco lowered his head and looked around through his dark eyelashes. There were a _lot_ of Masters here… He whimpered. Barry was the only other Asset here that they could punish, and Cisco didn’t want them to do that. If it came down to it, he’d take all the blame for anything Barry had done wrong, even though there were more people than usual who could punish him for it.

Cisco wondered how they’d do it. Barry said that Iris didn’t like talking about Asset-things and Handler-things so… So maybe _she_ wouldn’t punish him, and it would just be Handler Eddie and Joe, but they might make Barry hurt him, too… Cisco shuddered. Joe had _weapons,_ that was something Cisco knew, and Handler Eddie probably did too. So that would be how they punished him. Something predictable, hopefully. Something that he had already been through and knew how to handle.

It wouldn’t be whips, most likely. Supervisor Wells hadn’t had them, and he didn’t think that Joe had them either. Or burning. It could’ve been drowning or beatings, though-those happened a lot, and Cisco knew how to wait them out. And Joe had a bathtub that he could’ve used to hold him down in, and he and Handler Eddie (and Iris and Barry, but Cisco still wasn’t sure if Iris _ever_ punished or if they would make Barry hurt him) both had their fists.

Joe stuck his head out of the kitchen. “Hey, Iris, Eddie. The food will be done soon. Baby, c’mere and give me a hand.”

Iris kissed Handler Eddie on the cheek and left for the kitchen. Barry coughed awkwardly and looked away when she did, and Cisco tilted his head in confusion before looking back down. He didn’t read much into it. Barry did weird things all the time. It was like he actually thought that he was _human_ instead of an Asset. Joe and Iris were _very_ strange masters if they let him keep thinking that. Let Barry keep thinking that he was human.

Maybe it was because they wanted to make it hurt more when they _did_ punish him for thinking like that?

That must’ve been it. But even that explanation didn’t make very much sense.

Handler Eddie, Barry, and Cisco sat in uncomfortable silence for a few seconds before Handler Eddie broke it, turning to ask Barry a question in a low voice. Cisco politely covered his ears. He’d learned in his short time staying with Iris and Joe that these masters didn’t like it when he overheard their quiet conversations, even when he wasn’t doing it on purpose. They never yelled at him or hit him for it, but Iris had asked him to ‘cover his ears because it could be considered rude even if she and Joe didn’t really mind, was that okay?’

Barry stiffened and Cisco did the same thing automatically, worried that Eddie was going to get angry. “Iris told you that?” He said loudly, looking nervously toward the kitchen. “I-I didn’t-”

“It’s okay, Bar,” Eddie said gently, patting Barry’s shoulder. “I’m not going to hurt him for it.” He looked at Cisco. “I mean it, okay? I know you’re scared of me, and that’s alright, but I promise I’m not going to hurt you even if you are a…” He thought back to what Iris had called it. “A metahuman?”

That sounded right, anyway.

Cisco flinched a little. His brain was still getting used to the strange things that they called Assets here. But why was Handler Eddie acting like he hadn’t known about Assets before? He clearly knew about Barry…

Handler Eddie let his hand rest on Barry’s shoulder for a few moments longer, and Cisco chewed on his lip thoughtfully. That was the same face Barry made whenever Iris touched him or smiled at him. The same face Iris made when she looked at Handler Eddie and after she kissed him. Handler Eddie and Iris were clearly… Not married, or at least Cisco didn’t think so (didn’t everyone who was married live together? Iris and Handler Eddie didn’t live together) but in love with each other. So was Barry in love with them too?

Cisco would have to warn him about that. He’d never heard of an Asset falling in love with their Masters before, except maybe for the Ronnie-Asset and Doctor Caitlin, but there was no way that it couldn’t end badly for the Asset. The Ronnie-Asset had even been _killed_ because Doctor Caitlin loved him (or at least lied and said that she did), of course they wouldn’t hesitate to do the same thing to Barry.

So Cisco would have to tell him to _be careful_ because if Barry wasn’t careful then he was going to end up dead and Cisco would lose another friend and-and-

He cut off that train of thought before he could start crying.

Handler Eddie moved his hand off of Barry’s shoulder when he realized how long it had been there. “Uh. Sorry?”

“It’s fine,” Barry squeaked, and Cisco wondered if he had been wrong. Maybe Barry was just terrified of Handler Eddie. Not in love with him. “So, um… How’ve you been?”

“I just saw you this morning,” Handler Eddie pointed out mildly. “Not much has changed.”

Cisco made a confused noise. How had he seen Barry this morning? Barry had been at ‘work’, not at the STAR Labs facility.

Barry flushed. “I-yeah, I just meant-”

Cisco sat up a little straighter. “Please,” he said, flinching back when Handler Eddie looked at him with surprise written all over his face. “Please don’t punish Barry just-just because he made a little mistake, it was _very little_ please Sir he doesn’t deserve any punishment for this, please.”

“Hey, no, I’m not going to… To ‘punish’ Barry, okay? I’d never do something like that,” Handler Eddie said earnestly. Cisco narrowed his eyes at him. He was _sure_ that the Handler was lying, of course he was lying, but… He couldn’t _tell_ that he was lying. That was strange. Handlers usually didn’t even bother to pretend to be telling the truth, but when they did there were always ways to tell. “Barry’s my friend. I wouldn’t hurt him.”

“Yeah,” Barry said, words sticking in his throat, “we’re friends.”

Cisco looked back and forth between them. “Assets and Handlers are _not_ friends with each other. Not ever.”

Barry was a very, very weird Asset. He was _friends_ with his Masters. He was in love with some of them. He went to see Doctor Caitlin of his own free will. That was _strange._ Cisco didn’t like it. It was unfamiliar and clearly a trick to get Barry to trust them more than he should so he wouldn’t put up a fight for their experiments. It was clever, yes, but Cisco _did not_ like it.

“Well, like we told you, it’s different here,” Barry said gently, eyes flickering back and forth between Handler Eddie and Cisco. If the kid blew his secret identity _now,_ to _Eddie_ of all people, just _days_ after the Flash had publicly attacked him-“anybody can be friends with anybody else. And I’m not an Asset. Just like you’re not.”

“Asset?” Handler Eddie furrowed his eyebrows.

Cisco blinked slowly at him in confusion before remembering. They didn’t call them Assets here. “Metahuman,” he corrected himself. _“Metahumans_ and Handlers are not friends.”

There was a moment of silence, broken only by Barry’s tiny gasping noise.

“...What?” Handler Eddie looked at Barry.

Barry laughed nervously. “I-I-I don’t know what he’s talking about, I-”

“Allen,” Handler Eddie said flatly, and Cisco flinched. What had he done wrong? What had he said that was wrong? Had he gotten Barry in trouble? He started to tremble. Eddie rubbed his temples. “Allen, is he telling the truth?”

Barry swallowed and held his hands up. “Let’s-let’s go outside, okay? We’re scaring Carlos.”

Cisco whimpered and hugged his legs to his chest. “Please don’t hurt Barry, please, Sir, please don’t hurt him, I didn’t mean to get him in trouble, I didn’t mean to-”

“Shh, it’s okay,” Barry said gently. He looked at Handler Eddie pleadingly.

Instead of hurting him for begging like Cisco had expected him to, Handler Eddie sighed and pinched bridge of his nose. He didn’t want to scare a traumatized kid… “Fine. Allen, come outside with me.” Cisco sniffled and moved to follow them, but the Handler shook his head. “No. Stay here with Joe and Iris.”

Cisco stayed, cradling his head in his hands. He was sorry, he was sorry, he was so, _so_ sorry for whatever hurt he had just caused for Barry. He was so sorry. He hadn’t meant to, he really hadn’t meant to. Maybe Barry-maybe Barry wouldn’t get punished too harshly, since it had been _Cisco’s_ fault, not his. It hadn’t been Barry who had been disobedient.

He knew it was a slim hope. Before, whenever he’d done something on accident to get Bette in trouble, or she’d made a mistake and gotten him punished, Eiling had punished them both, yes, but he’d punished the one who had gotten in trouble _more._

Cisco shuddered. He didn’t want to think about how Handler Eddie would hurt Barry outside.

He wondered if Barry would still love Handler Eddie after he’d punished him.

* * *

Barry sat down on the steps of Joe’s porch and looked up at Eddie. “So.”

“You _are_ a metahuman, aren’t you?” Eddie narrowed his eyes.

Barry looked away. His stomach felt like it was eating itself alive with anxiety. His head was screaming at him to lie, to tell Eddie that he _wasn’t_ a metahuman, that he was just-just _Barry,_ ordinary Barry. That the kid had been lying. Or at least saying something that he himself _thought_ was true, even if it really wasn’t and Barry didn’t have any powers. He pushed all of those instincts down. Eddie deserved the truth. Especially after what had happened between them when Bivolo had made him so _angry…_

“Yeah,” Barry swallowed, “I am.”

Eddie sat down next to him on the porch silently. He didn’t say anything for a few moments. “So…”

Barry curled up on himself and pressed his forehead against his knees. “I have superspeed.”

“Like the Flash.” Eddie said softly. Not a question. A statement.

“Like the Flash,” Barry agreed. He didn’t say it. The words just kind of sat there in between them. Barry hugged his knees tighter. “I’m sorry.”

They both knew what he was talking about.

“I can’t forgive you,” Eddie said honestly. “I will. But not right now. Does Iris know? Does Joe?”

“Joe knows.” Barry looked away. “Iris doesn’t.”

 _Now_ Eddie started to get angry, jumping to his feet. _“What?!_ I mean-I didn’t _think_ she knew, I like to think she would’ve told me, but… _Joe_ knows? But _Iris_ doesn’t? Why the hell not?”

Barry flinched. “I was-I was trying to keep her safe. That’s-that’s what Joe thought we should do, _I_ wanted to tell her so badly, and then… And then… I just couldn’t. I didn’t want to let Joe down and I didn’t want Iris to hate me and it’s too late now, isn’t it?” Everything came out in a rush. “It’s too late for me to tell her now. She’ll hate me.”

“And you’ll deserve it,” Eddie retorted. Barry winced. “You didn’t tell her. You’re Iris’s best friend. You see her every day. And you didn’t tell her.”

Barry opened his mouth but found that there was nothing he could say to defend himself.

Eddie sighed and opened the door. He could hear Iris laughing loudly all the way in the kitchen. “I’m going back inside. Come in when you want. I won’t tell her. Yet.”

He let the door bang shut behind him.

Barry didn’t go back inside. He needed to go for a run. He’d be back in time for dinner.

* * *

 

Cisco sat up straight when Handler Eddie stepped back inside before shrinking back and whimpering. Why hadn’t Barry come back inside too? If Cisco focused, he could still hear Barry’s heartbeat, so he must’ve still been alive. But-but then why hadn’t he come in? How badly had Handler Eddie hurt him?

“Is Barry hurting?” He whispered, looking up at the Handler with wide eyes. “How badly did his punishment hurt him? Please, please, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to get him in trouble.”

“What?” Handler Eddie paused for a second before he seemed to realize what Cisco was asking. “Barry’s fine. He’s okay. He’s just outside. I’m… Not very happy with him right now. But I’m not going to hurt him, alright?”

Cisco swallowed and hugged his knees tightly. “You-you really didn’t punish him? Do you not have the tools for punishing? I don’t understand.”

Handler Eddie shook his head. “I didn’t-”

He was interrupted by the door opening and Barry coming back in at the same time Joe’s voice called “Dinner’s ready!”

Cisco’s nose twitched a little. He still wasn’t used to the strange practice these masters had of feeding their Assets at _least_ three times a day, even if by now he understood that it was because they wanted Assets to be strong. And to be strong, you needed to eat. So it _did_ make some sense for them to feed him so often. That didn’t make it any less surprising when he consistently got large meals every day instead of one or two small scraps every few days.

Handler Eddie left to go sit at the table, and Cisco hesitated. He looked at Barry. Barry would know the protocol for this sort of thing. For what they should do when there was about to be a meeting over dinner between Masters. Were he and Barry supposed to sit down under the table or next to the chairs? Joe had promised that he would never starve them, either of them, but that probably just meant that they’d get to eat _after_ everyone else.

He watched Barry get up and lean against Iris’s chair, resting his forearms across the top of the back of it. So he’d been _right._ They _weren’t_ supposed to sit in the chairs when there were this many masters around, even if it was just one more than usual.

Cisco hurried to sit next to the chair that Joe always sat in. Barry seemed to have picked being in between Handler Eddie and Iris. Cisco wondered if that was because Handler Eddie had just punished him. So he had to sit with him. Did that mean that Cisco had to sit with whoever had punished him last? But none of them had ever punished him… Who was he supposed to pick if he hadn’t done anything worthy of punishment?

He decided to stay near Joe’s chair, not daring to move even as he realized that he’d left his Legos on the coffee table in the living room and had therefore left a mess that he was going to face punishment for.

“Hey, kiddo. You wanna sit at the head of the table tonight?” Joe asked, leaning over Cisco’s head to set a plate down in front of Iris and another down in front of Eddie before putting a third next to the chair beside the Handler. “Bar, go sit down.”

Barry obeyed. Oh, Cisco realized, maybe he just had to wait until Joe gave him an order to sit. That made sense. “Sir?”

“You’re standing at my chair,” Joe pointed out gently, disappearing into the kitchen and coming back with two more plates that he set down at Cisco’s usual spot and at his own. “Do you want to sit here for tonight? I don’t mind.”

“No, Sir,” Cisco said, lowering his gaze respectfully. “I just want to know where I am supposed to sit. Please.”

“Well, you can sit here, or you can sit at your usual spot. I don’t mind,” Joe said softly.

Barry, Iris, and Handler Eddie had gone silent and were looking at Cisco. He shrank back a little before making a choice and scrambling to sit in his usual place. Barry smiled at him and then loudly picked up the conversation again by asking Iris about Jitters.

Cisco leaned forward a little bit. The food in front of him smelled _so good…_ He picked up his fork and poked at it and almost started crying as a wave of memories hit him all at once. It smelled different than he remembered, like Joe had used different ingredients, but… He couldn’t stop the tiny sob that shook his shoulders.

He took a bite before wolfing down the rest of the plate.

Cisco didn’t notice that he hadn’t asked for permission this time. That it hadn’t even occurred to him to do so.

Joe, Iris, and Barry, on the other hand, did notice, and exchanged a small smile between them.

This was progress. Cisco may not have realized it, but this was progress.

* * *

A few days later, Iris grinned up at Cisco from the bottom of the stairs. “Merry Christmas!”

Cisco sleepily blinked at Iris as he paused on the stairs and looked around with thinly veiled confusion. There were boxes in the living room and he couldn’t really tell _what_ they were for. And… Iris had said _Christmas,_ but… His gaze flickered upstairs to the mezuzahs on the bedroom doorframes that he could still see.

Iris followed his gaze and smiled. “Yeah, Dad’s Jewish and so is Barry, but my mom was Catholic, so we split time. We only really celebrate the high holy days and Passover, though, but now that Barry lives in his own apartment he does them all.”

Cisco sat down on the steps and wondered if he was supposed to help her open the boxes. “Do you-do you want me to help you? I mean-do you want me to help you, Ma’am?”

“I told you, it’s just Iris,” Iris sighed. “And no, you don’t have to help me. Do you want some hot chocolate? Dad’s out, and I’m not as good of a cook as he is, but you can have some cereal and hot chocolate’s really easy for even me to make.”

“Oh.” Cisco hugged his shoulders. Even though Joe wasn’t there, Iris was still offering him food… He’d noticed that there didn’t seem to be any sort of hierarchy to the masters at Joe’s house (did it count as a facility? Cisco didn’t really know) when it came to things like eating and who could put Cisco to sleep. In fact, Joe had explicitly told him that he had the right to be able to put _himself_ to sleep whenever he wanted, and if anybody needed him for something or was worried about him they could just wake him up and Cisco wouldn’t be in trouble or anything like that at all. “Yes, please, Ma’-Iris.”

He was getting better at that, much better, but he still slipped sometimes. Thankfully, Iris didn’t seem to either notice or mind enough to punish him for it. Not even with something minor like a slap.

Iris stood up to let him squeeze past her and followed her to the kitchen. Cisco fiddled with his pajama sleeve awkwardly. He still wasn’t used to sleeping on something that wasn’t a cold cement floor or in anything that wasn’t the tattered remains of his clothes.

Cisco watched Iris pull out a packet of hot chocolate mix, some milk, two cups, a spoon and a bowl of cereal. “Here, you can eat your cereal while I make the hot chocolate, okay?”

Cisco looked at the cereal and then back at Iris before mechanically pouring it into the bow. He added some milk and realized that Iris hadn’t moved a muscle. She was just… Watching him. Like she was waiting to see what he would do.

Cisco’s heart jumped into his throat as he realized what he had forgotten to say and what Iris must’ve been expecting. “Can I-can I eat, Iris? Do I have permission to eat?”

Iris’s shoulders slumped and she sighed. Cisco froze. Had he done something wrong? Had that _not_ been what she wanted him to say? To do? Had she been expecting him to do something else like serve _her_ a bowl of cereal? He’d do that in a heartbeat if that’s what she wanted him to do. He hadn’t been punished for something yet and he didn’t want to start now.

“Go ahead, eat.” Iris turned around and started to make the hot chocolate. She’d hoped that he’d just eat like he had been doing on and off for the past few days, seemingly forgetting his ritual of asking for permission each time. But it looked like that wasn’t going to happen. Iris just hoped she hadn’t scared him too badly.

“Is there anything you want for Christmas?” Iris asked, trying to make some sort of conversation. “Er-are you Christian?”

Cisco shrugged slowly even though Iris couldn’t see him because her back was turned. “Like you,” he said softly. The punishment for not replying would be worse than the punishment for remembering something from Before. Or at least he hoped so. And… And Cisco had been remembering the holidays he celebrated with his family for a long time. Not that Eiling knew. “Both.”

Iris grinned and looked over her shoulder as she stirred the hot chocolate mix. “We should start a club. I’ll make us matching t-shirts.” She set the mugs down in front of Cisco. “Pick which one you want.”

Cisco hesitated for a second before pointing to the one on the left. It had more mini marshmallows and he liked the little chip it had on its red rim. He’d used it before and it felt good to have his mouth on it. The different textures felt nice.

Iris slid it closer to him. “Go ahead. It’s hot, though, so blow on it a little bit before drinking.”

That was another thing Cisco still had to get used to. It may have seemed small, but… Here, when something was too hot, they _warned_ him. They didn’t wait for him to find out on his own by burning himself. They actually took the time to _tell_ him. Like they didn’t want him to hurt himself on accident. It was so _strange._ At first Cisco had wondered if it was some kind of trick, since he knew that it reminded him of Before. Of having a mother who would help him drink hot soup when he was sick and home from school because he was throwing up. But _they_ couldn’t have known that it reminded him of Before, so… So maybe it wasn’t a trick.

Maybe they genuinely didn’t want him to get hurt.

“Iris?” Cisco asked softly. He fidgeted with the spoon. “I-I was wondering if, um…” He swallowed. Iris didn’t look angry or like she was about to hit him, but that didn’t mean she absolutely wasn’t going to. Cisco took a deep breath. “I was wondering if I could have some-some paper? So-So I could could draw something?”

He cringed back, expecting her to take both of their cups of hot chocolate and dump them on him. Instead, she just beamed at him, whole face lighting up. He’d actually asked her something without prompting! That wasn’t about punishment or Rules or-or everything else strange and horrible that he usually asked about!

“Of course,” she said warmly, standing up and taking her cup with her. “I’ve gotta go to work, so you’ll be by yourself for a few hours”-this was something of a test run, to see if the kid could handle being alone for a short amount of time while everyone else was at work since Hartley had said he had another date early this morning, which Iris hadn’t really believed, and Caitlin had to work too-“but I can get you some blank paper out of the printer and some markers now.”

Cisco watched her go, shying back when she got too close to him. He still didn’t trust her not to suddenly lash out and hurt him without warning.

He needed to make some presents. That must’ve been the point of telling him that it was almost Christmas-so that he could make the masters something. He didn’t really know _what_ he could do, but maybe he could draw something… Cisco would get something actually nice for Barry. He’d ask permission to make a tracking device or something so that the masters wouldn’t lose track of their Asset no matter how fast he was going and then give it to Barry after making it look nice. That way the masters would accept him making it for Barry and Barry would like it.

Handler Rathaway would probably be willing to provide the materials for that, wouldn’t he? If Cisco told him what it was for and he approved of it? Of course, if the Handler didn’t approve them he would have to think of something else, but making something useful for the masters while at the same time giving Barry something nice would be good. Cisco liked making Barry happy when it wasn’t dangerous to either of them to actually _be_ happy.

Lately, it seemed like it was less and less scary to feel good. Cisco didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing, but he knew it had something to do with how the masters here treated their Assets.

Like they were people.

And the more they spoke to him and Barry like they were people, the more Cisco started to believe them.

* * *

“I’m your babysitter tonight, Carlos,” Hartley huffed, throwing himself down on the West’s couch. “Sorry I didn’t bring the rats over this time, buddy.”

He was a little surprised that he was genuinely sorry for not bringing them, but it wouldn’t have been good to do it. They didn’t like car rides, and they’d be safer and more stress-free at his apartment. But… Still. Hartley felt bad about it. The kid had liked the rats. A lot. And hey, it was nice seeing someone who had been so traumatized being happy for once.

The kid made a small sad sound before flipping over the page he was drawing on so he could write on the back. Hartley lifted himself up on his elbows. “What’re you drawing?”

Carlos blushed hard. He knew he couldn’t _lie,_ not ever to a master but especially not to their _face._ “I-I’m making a gift, Sir.”

“A gift?” Hartley raised an eyebrow.

“For-for Joe.” He looked down, blushing even more. “Iris said it was Christmas.” He nodded to the half-decorated tree in the corner of the room. Iris had helped him put some stuff on it. “So… So I’m making people some… Some gifts. To surprise them.”

Hartley leaned back down and opened his book. “That’s very nice of you. You don’t have to make one for me if you don’t want to. I’m Jewish.”

Carlos bit his lower lip nervously. “But… But I already made you one… Would you like me to destroy it, Handler Rathaway?”

“No, no,” Hartley answered hastily. “You don’t have to do that. If you’ve already made it then it doesn’t matter. And I told you, don’t call me ‘Sir’. Or ‘Handler Rathaway’. It makes me uncomfortable and I’d feel better if you called me Hartley.”

Earlier that day, he’d had a conversation with Caitlin over the phone about it while trying to stop the other person in his bed from making sex noises while no sex was happening. She’d told him to keep trying and to be as clear as possible without implying that punishment would happen if the kid _didn’t_ stop. Even if it made Hartley uncomfortable to be called things like that, which was perfectly fine, since she was equally uncomfortable with Carlos calling her ‘Doctor Caitlin’ and turning her profession into something to be feared, it was more important to make sure the kid didn’t think he was going to get hurt.

The thin trust that Barry had built up with him was still fragile, and the last thing they needed was for Carlos (god, Hartley hated calling him that-it wasn’t his name. They didn’t even know his _real name)_ to have another episode.

Instead of immediately freaking out like he had the other times, Carlos took a deep shaking breath and hesitantly said, “Hartley?”

Hartley smiled a little bit. Hey, nobody was around, he could drop his facade a little bit. Just a little, though. His name sounded unfamiliar in the kid’s mouth, but that would hopefully change soon. “Thank you. Really. Nobody here is your ‘Master’ or your ‘Handler’ or anything like that. Which means you don’t have to call us things like that. Hasn’t Joe been telling you things like that?”

“Yeah.” He fidgeted with the hem of his shirt and chewed on the inside of his cheek. “Joe says that I’m free now. That I don’t belong to _anybody_ and nobody is allowed to hurt me ever again. And that if they do he’ll hunt them down and kill them for hurting me because I don’t deserve any of what happened to me.”

He swallowed. He didn’t feel comfortable telling Handler Rathaway-telling _Hartley_ about the other things Joe said to him, like the things he said after the nightmares. How Joe was going to protect him like he was his own son, that he loved him the same way he loved Iris, that he’d never let anybody hurt one of his kids ever again and god help whoever tried. It felt too personal. And-and a little omission of truth wasn’t a _real_ lie, was it? Did that count?

He decided that if Hand-if _Hartley_ asked specifically about it then he would tell him, but if he didn’t… Then he would keep it to himself. At least for now.

“And do you believe him when he tells you those things?” Hartley asked him hopefully.

He watched Carlos fidget a little bit more before nodding a tiny bit. “I-I think I do believe him, Han-Hartley.”

Hartley grinned a little wider. “Good. You should believe him. He’s telling the truth.”

There was a long silence as Carlos drew something that looked a little bit like a scribbled purple and blue flower on one of his papers and Hartley went back to his book. “...Hartley?”

“Yeah?” Hartley looked at him.

“Can I-can I have some tools to make something for Barry?” He asked tentatively. “I want to make him a bracelet. It’ll have a tracker in it so you’ll always know where he is if he tries to get away, I promise it’ll be a _useful_ gift, I promise. I wouldn’t make him something useless-”

“Slow down,” Hartley interrupted. “Yeah, sure, I can get you the stuff to make Barry a bracelet. But you don’t have to put a tracker in it, alright? We don’t need to know where Barry is all the time. He’s his own person, remember? Just like you are. So we don’t need to know where he is at all times. In fact, I’d appreciate it if we _didn’t_ know where he was at all times. It’s weird. I don’t care _that_ much about Barry’s personal life.”

He watched Carlos flinch back just a little bit. “Okay, Sir. Yes Sir. I mean-yes, Hartley.”

Watching Hartley nod a little and look back down at the thick book he was reading, he decided that he would put a little tracker in it anyway. Even if only he could access it. It… It _was_ technically a form of disobedience, something that they would punish him for if they had the chance to, but… But what if it _helped?_ What if Barry got hurt far away and Doctor Caitlin couldn’t get to him in time to help him? The tracker would help him. It would _help._

Surely that would make up for the fact that he was being disobedient. Or at least lighten the punishment that he would receive for it.

Joe had been telling him that he needed to make his own decisions. That he wouldn’t be punished for thinking for himself.

This would be a test of what would happen if he really tried to do it.

* * *

Something was wrong.

It’d been wrong for some time now.

Cisco was used to Barry by now. The vibrations he gave off. Everyone had a different frequency, but Barry’s was special. More humming and more buzzing. It was more comforting, too, in a way. The humming mixed with the strange fast pace of his heart. If he focused, he could tell where it was no matter how far from him Barry was. But lately it had been getting mixed up. Cisco would focus and try to find his vibration but instead all he would get was a screeching in his ears like someone else was using the frequency. Which wasn’t possible.

Eiling had done hundreds of tests on it. Cisco _knew_ what he could and couldn’t do, at least when it came to detecting someone’s frequency. And this had never happened before.

Barry had been more and more upset and agitated lately, too. Cisco hadn’t seen Doctor Caitlin for awhile. Hartley had dropped the materials and tools Cisco would need to make the bracelet for Barry off at the West house, but Cisco hadn’t even seen him do it. Joe had been whispering some things about a trap to Barry whenever he stopped by the house. Iris had started to pack up her things and told Cisco that she was going to move in with Eddie and it was just going to be Cisco and Joe for awhile.

Something was _wrong._

So Cisco did what he always did when something was wrong and he didn’t know what it was and therefore couldn’t fix it.

He kept his head down and didn’t make a scene and followed every single Order and Rule to the letter without stepping so much as a toe out of line.

That seemed to make things a little better. They weren’t distracted by him anymore when he was as unobtrusive as he possibly could be. It did surprise him that even though they weren’t paying as much attention to him as they had been, Joe and Iris (who was still packing her bags and hadn’t moved out yet) would still talk to him at dinner and ask him about his day even though they knew that he hadn’t left the house.

Well, hadn’t left the house _except_ to go in the backyard, which Joe had told him was completely safe. Had told him that he had permission to go out there whenever he wanted. Cisco took full advantage of that as often as he could. Going outside was still so new for him… He loved it. Feeling the sun or the rain on his face while breathing in fresh air made him cry almost every time. Joe thought it was cute-he’d been concerned at first, but once Cisco sobbed out that it was the _good_ kind of crying, he encouraged him to go out into the backyard every day.

Cisco had watched from the top of the stairs while Barry told Iris that he was in love with her, pleased that he’d been right about it. Being right about things was nice. Even if he hadn’t told anybody about his hypothesis. And he’d watched Barry sit her down and tell her something very softly that Cisco could’ve heard if Barry hadn’t looked up at him at that exact moment and made eye contact with him. The expression on Barry’s face made Cisco’s stomach clench and he scrambled silently back up the stairs to his room.

He wasn’t fast enough not to hear Iris’s strangled gasp of _“What?!”,_ though.

Cisco could guess what Barry had told her.

He wondered if he had told her about being in love with Eddie the same way that he was in love with her, too.

Cisco figured out what was blocking the connection between him and Barry’s vibrations later that night.

“You’re going to be alone for the night,” Joe said softly, kneeling down and squeezing Cisco’s shoulder. “Is that okay? Me, Eddie, and Barry have some business to attend to, Iris has work”-he didn’t mention that she’d been strongly avoiding him and Barry lately, and he knew exactly why (the only reason she was even coming tonight was because of the kid)-“and Caitlin and Hartley are going to help me, Eddie, and Barry. So you’re going to be alone. Just for the night.”

He’d stayed at the house as long as he dared to, making sure Cisco had eaten. He didn’t want the kid to try to make something for himself and get hurt, or worse-not eat anything at all because he was afraid of accidentally doing something that Joe didn’t want him to do.

“Just for the night?” Cisco repeated, a little nervous.

Joe nodded. “That’s right. Just for the evening, really. We’ll get back here before it gets too late-Iris will probably be home first-and we’ll have some hot chocolate and exchange a few presents or something, alright?” _If the man in yellow didn’t kill them first._ “I promise.”

Joe prayed it was a promise he would be able to keep.

Cisco hugged his knees. “You promise, Sir?”

“I promise.” Joe gently squeezed Cisco’s shoulder. “It’s gonna be fine. And remember, if something happens and someone tries to hurt you, you’re allowed to use your powers to protect yourself. You’re allowed to do _anything_ it takes to protect yourself. Nobody will blame you for staying safe. Can you say that for me so I know you understand?”

“Nobody will blame me for staying safe,” Cisco repeated obediently. He took a deep breath and chewed on his lower lip. “Joe? Can you… Can you call me? Halfway through? So I know you’re okay?”

He flinched back a little bit. It was so strange wanting to know if a master was _safe._ Before, any second without Eiling or one of his people hovering over him was a blessing. Was a second to savor.

Now… Now he _liked_ being around his masters.

No. Not his masters.

They didn’t like being called masters. That was because they _weren’t_ masters, Cisco realized. They were something else. Something different.

...Maybe something a lot better.

“Of course I’ll call you,” Joe said warmly. “And kiddo? I’m really proud of you.”

“Why?” Cisco blinked. That was another thing that was different. Here, people were proud of him. Here, people _liked_ him. Not just as a lab rat and a test subject, but as a friend. A son.

“You’ve made a lot of progress lately,” Joe smiled. “I know that what happened to you isn’t something easy to get over, I know it’s going to take you a long time to feel safe and okay again, I know that it’s not going to happen overnight, and I know it’ll probably take your whole life for you to recover from what happened to you. But you’ve made a lot of steps in the right direction. You’re doing really well. And I’m so, so proud of you.”

Cisco blinked back tears. For a moment, it’d been like there was someone from Before speaking to him. “Th-thank you. Joe.”

Joe gave him a small hug, warm and comforting and smelling like coffee. Cisco leaned into him. It was still so _new_ to be treated like a person, to get hugged like a person would get hugged instead of roughly grasped and hurt. It was still so new. So new and so _good._ “See you soon, kiddo.”

Cisco sat on the couch and waited.

He didn’t move much. Just sat and waited for Joe to call the house phone that he knew Joe only kept around out of spite since Iris was so adamant about getting rid of it. But the call didn’t come. Cisco chewed the inside of his cheek to shreds while he waited, anxiety clawing at his insides. Why wasn’t Joe calling? Was he hurt? Was someone else hurt? Did something really bad happen?

Was Joe _dead?_ If Joe was dead, did that mean that the others were dead too?

Cisco tried to calm himself down by thinking of something else. He got off the couch and stacked the drawings he’d made for everyone and took the bracelet for Barry on and off his wrist. It was a flat metal band that Cisco had sneakily infused with his powers. When Cisco held it, it set his teeth on edge just like the boomerang had, but when Barry touched it he wouldn’t feel anything. Hartley hadn’t given him the materials he’d need for a _real_ tracker, but Cisco could easily track the weird vibrations he’d caused the bracelet to have. He’d glued some beads that he’d found under his bed to it too, and some assorted Lego pieces. So it’d look nice.

Cisco arranged and rearranged the papers and the bracelet as he tried to decide what would look best. He wondered if Barry had gotten him anything even though Iris had said that Barry was Jewish. If anybody was going to get him a Christmas present, it would be Barry-Assets and Metahumans stuck together no matter what, even if here they weren’t treated as badly as Cisco had initially thought. Of course none of the non-Assets would’ve gotten him anything, but Barry…

Cisco wouldn’t blame him if he hadn’t, of course. Assets didn’t have a lot of time to themselves and the others probably wouldn’t want Barry to have anything that he could build with. Handler Rathaway-no, Hartley was the builder, not Barry. Hartley _and_ Cisco, now.

He’d just gotten the drawings perfectly the way that he wanted them when the door slammed open almost off its hinges.

Nothing touched him, but for a moment Cisco tasted coppery blood in his mouth and felt it drip out of his nose. Everything smelled like ozone, and he could feel the hair on his arms standing on end as he tried to focus on the vibrating figure standing in front of him.

They felt like Barry, only yellow all over instead of red like Barry was (sometimes, anyway), with glowing red eyes that looked him up and down. Cisco tilted his head. He wondered if they expected him to be afraid of them.

A lot of things scared Cisco, but this wasn’t one of them.

Assets didn’t scare him. Assets stuck together.

He didn’t know it, but behind the mask Eobard Thawne took careful notice of this. The boy who had seemed so afraid of him as Dr. Harrison Wells, who had cowered and flinched and whimpered every time he so much as moved too quickly, had masked his face with icy calm. He didn’t look afraid.

It seemed like he’d misjudged him slightly. Oh well. It wouldn’t cause much of a change of plans.

Cisco blinked as he tasted more blood and then the person in yellow was gone with not a shred of evidence that they had ever been there.

So that, Cisco realized, had been what was causing the disruption when he tried to find Barry. The thing he had built the bracelet to solve. An Asset with Barry’s powers, who clearly _wasn’t_ Barry (Cisco was pretty sure he had been just a little bit shorter than Barry was), but still moved like he did.

Dread swirled in Cisco’s gut as he wondered if the Asset in yellow was one of Eiling’s, sent to track him down and then report back to their master about where he was and who had him.

If that Asset really was going to hurt him, Cisco decided, he wasn’t going to tell the others about it. He couldn’t afford to let Barry get taken by Eiling when the Asset in yellow eventually had to bring him back.

Barry didn’t deserve that.

* * *

 

“I’m so sorry I didn’t call,” Joe murmured, pulling Cisco into a hug. “Did it take a long time for Iris to get here?”

Cisco shrugged a little. “No, Si-Joe.”

“Good, I’m glad.” Joe moved past him to greet Doctor Caitlin, who Cisco made sure to stay across the room from, and Barry took his place kneeling in front of Cisco.

“Hey, bud,” he greeted, holding out his hand for a high five. Furrowing his eyebrows in confusion, Cisco hit their hands together, hoping he’d interpreted that motion the right way. He noticed the bruise on Barry’s jaw and the cut up near his temple and frowned a little. Concerned. “Merry Christmas. Sorry things have been so hectic lately. How’ve you been?”

Cisco looked around at the other people in the room. Joe, who had picked up a mug and was leaning over to say hello to Iris. Iris, who was perched on Eddie’s lap and avoiding eye contact with Barry. Eddie who was smiling warmly at Cisco before nodding a tiny bit to Barry like he wasn’t really sure if there was anything to say. Hartley, who was sitting awkwardly on the floor with a covered… _Something_ in his lap. Doctor Caitlin, who was next to him, awkwardly whispering something about not ever knowing what to do at Christmas parties in his ear. But Barry wasn’t talking to any of them.

“I made you a gift,” he said instead of _really_ answering Barry’s question. He didn’t know. He’d been-he’d been-he’d just _been._ “It’s-It’s on the table.” He pointed to the coffee table. “I drew something for everyone else ‘cept Handler Eddie but I made you the bracelet.”

Barry picked it up and turned it over in his hands. “Oh, I love it!” He said, voice full of completely genuine delight. “It’s great! Thank you so much!” He wiggled it into his wrist and showed it to Joe. “Hey, look what Carlos made for me!”

“Cisco,” Cisco corrected before flinching. Oh god, oh god, he hadn’t meant to say that, it had just come out of his mouth, he _hadn’t meant to say that,_ not only had he just corrected someone in front of lots of people who could hurt him but he had said his _real_ name instead of the fake name that they had given him. He started trembling. He felt like he was going to throw up. “I mean-”

“Cisco? Is that your name?” Barry’s smile got even wider as his eyes lit up. Above their heads, Joe, Hartley, and Caitlin shared a little triumphant look. A _name._ They had a _name._ Finally, they had an actual name to call him. And that meant that finally they could really get started on looking for his family. Cisco swallowed and made a tiny sobbing sound before nodding just a little bit. “Alright. Look what _Cisco_ made for me!”

“Do the rest of us get bracelets too?” Iris asked, not unkindly. She had the same smile on her face that Barry did.

Cisco shook his head and took a few deep breaths. They weren’t going to punish him now. That was good. They were going to wait until later. That made sense. And for now it was best to revert back to using honorifics. Just to pacify them a little. “N-No Iris Ma’am. I drew you this.”

He scrambled to get his stack of drawings and held out the one on top like a peace offering. Iris winced but kept the smile on her face. “I love it, Car-Cisco. Cisco. _Cisco._ Thank you.”

Cisco shrank back. Why was she saying his name like that? It sounded so weird and he didn’t like it. Oh, this had been a big mistake. “I-I made everyone drawings. Except of Handler Eddie because I didn’t know he would be here.”

 _That_ was something Cisco _knew_ he was going to get slapped for. It had been stupid and thoughtless and dumb and careless for him not to make one for Handler Eddie just because he hadn’t known.

“That’s fine,” Handler Eddie said gently, and Cisco blinked. That-that didn’t sound very accusatory. “Why don’t you give everyone else theirs? So they don’t feel left out?”

Cisco hesitantly passed out his drawings. When he got to Hartley and Doctor Caitlin, he paused and waited for their approval or rejection. Doctor Caitlin looked at hers and then at Hartley’s before looking at her friend and smirking. “Hartley, are you tearing up?”

“No,” he snapped, taking off his glasses and furiously cleaning them, “I just have capitalism in my eye. Say what you will about Jews, at least our holidays don’t look like _this.”_

 _“I_ think it’s nice,” Doctor Caitlin said. “All the pretty lights… The snow…”

“That’s because you’re a traitor to our kind.” Hartley rolled his eyes.

Doctor Caitlin shoved him. “I’m _not!_ Thank you, Ca- _Cisco,_ the drawings are lovely. And I’m very proud of you for telling us your name.”

“Thank you, Doctor Caitlin.” He hugged himself.

“Just Caitlin,” she corrected gently. “Like how Hartley is just Hartley and Iris is just Iris. I’m just Caitlin. Not Doctor, not Master, not Ma’am. Caitlin.”

“Caitlin,” Cisco repeated, sounding unsure of himself.

“That’s right. Caitlin. Now, I think Hartley has something for you…?” She elbowed Hartley a little and stood up, heading for the dining room. “I’m going to get some drinks.”

Hartley patted the cloth-covered boxy thing in his lap a little. “Sit down.” Cisco obediently sat in place, crossing his legs and listening attentively for orders. “Iris told me that I should get you a gift, and I remembered how much you liked the rats, and… Well, she can’t stay with you at Joe’s house, I don’t think he’ll like that very much, but she’ll be yours and you can name her.”

He pulled off the cloth and showed Cisco that in his lap was a small cage with a black and white rat inside of it. Cisco gasped, covering his mouth. It was so _small_ and _delicate_ and _cute…_ “I-I-thank you, Sir-Hartley, thank you so much, I-I-"

“Hartley, get that thing out of my house,” Joe called, and Hartley rolled his eyes.

“I’m taking her with me when I leave, relax.” He looked at Cisco expectantly. “Do you want to name her?”

Cisco nodded, still covering his mouth with both hands as his eyes shone. It wasn’t the way that they did when his powers made them glow, something that Hartley and Caitlin were both glad to see. Instead he just looked like any child _should_ on any holiday that was supposed to be about happiness (and in Christmas’ case, capitalism). “Oh, yes please, I-she’s so _small…”_

Cisco wriggled down so he was lying flat on his stomach, holding himself up on his elbows as he watched the little rat clean her face. She was just a baby, really.

“Skitters,” he decided. “Her name is Skitters and I love her.”

“I’m glad you love her.” Hartley checked his watch. “I’ve gotta go.”

“What? Stay,” Caitlin said as she returned, sitting back down on the floor to watch Cisco coo at the newly-named Skitters. “Where could you possibly be going?”

“Home to celebrate Jewish Christmas with my boyfriend. He already got the Chinese food,” Hartley answered flatly, rolling his eyes.

Caitlin grinned. “So mystery man is your _boyfriend_ officially now, huh?”

“I’m not a third grader,” Hartley groaned. “We’re _adults_ and if he wants to call himself my boyfriend then he can.”

Cisco tuned them out. Skitters had stopped washing her ears and face and had moved on to grooming her stomach, which was much more interesting to him than whatever the adults were talking about.

He hadn’t been punished when they had learned his name. He hadn’t been punished when he had stopped using the honorifics. He hadn’t been punished when he gave Barry the bracelet and gave everyone else art and didn’t have one for Handler Eddie. He hadn’t been punished at _all,_ not here, not when he tried to recall a time that he had been.

Obviously, Cisco couldn’t let his guard down yet. And he didn’t trust them, not really. Except maybe for Barry. And he trusted Skitters the rat wholeheartedly, but that’s because she wasn’t human and couldn’t hurt him and punish him.

But things were clearly even more different here than they had been with Eiling than he had previously thought.

Different and _better._

Hopefully the Asset in yellow’s sudden appearance wasn’t going to change that.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm."--Willa Cather

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this entire chapter in the last three days-I basically wrote nonstop the whole time, for this fic and some other much smaller works/projects. We're coming up on an episode that I've been planning my rewrite of for over a year, probably over two at this point.
> 
> Warnings for mentions of past self harm, but I'm fairly certain that's the only real warning for this chapter outside of things warned for in the tags/things that occur in every chapter. If it's not, _please_ let me know.

“You still comfortable?” Hartley checked, peeking over his shoulder to look down behind his folding chair where Cisco was crouching down and watching through the crossed support bars that held the seat up. Every time Cisco flinched or jumped, it jostled him a little in his seat.

Cisco nodded, eyes fixed on where Barry was ducking and weaving around the rubber bullets fired out of the modified drone. He rubbed his warmly gloved hands together nervously. “It-it just looks too close.”

“Hey, he asked us to make it hard,” Hartley shrugged with a little smirk on his face. “So we made it hard. We’re just giving the man what he  _ wants.” _

“Hard isn’t the same as  _ dead,”  _ Caitlin pointed out. “You’re going to kill him!”

“He’ll be fine! He’s not going to die! And, hey, it’s not  _ my  _ fault Barry’s trying to work out his emotional problems at the same time he’s working out his ‘I need to get faster’ problem,” Hartley huffed, rolling his eyes. “Besides, most of this was Ca-I mean, most of this was Cisco’s work. I just made sure all of his designs actually functioned with the technology we have. And you know he wouldn’t do anything to hurt Barry on purpose.”

_ “Hey, this is too easy!”  _ Barry shouted over the comms, voice crackling with static,  _ “Are you guys gonna bring it or what?” _

“Barry,” Caitlin began, voice tinged with disapproval, “I really don’t think this is a very healthy coping mechanism. Have you tried actually talking it out with Iris? And I know you want to go faster, but this isn’t the right way to go about it. You could get seriously-”

“Sorry, too late, I’m bringing it,” Hartley interrupted, tapping something into his tablet and grinning over his shoulder at Cisco when he stifled his little laugh by shoving his hand into his mouth. He ducked his head down a little bit when Caitlin reached over to shove Hartley’s shoulder, his heart jumping up into his throat.

Even if these people weren’t  _ really _ Handlers or masters, not anymore at least, that didn’t mean they couldn’t go back to being them if they decided to hurt him. And Cisco knew that he was a  _ much  _ smaller and easier target to take anger out on than someone like Hartley was by far.

He scooted back a little bit, shifting so that he could only hear what was going on and not actually see it. He closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths as he focused on Barry’s not-so-distant heartbeat. It was still going strong, fluttering comfortingly behind the lightning emblem that Cisco liked to fiddle with while Hartley worked on the suit. For a moment it stuttered and faltered and Cisco stiffened, but it went back to being calm and sure a second later as a loud explosion made Cisco clap his hands up to cover his ears.

“Hey!” Hartley yelped. He stared wide-eyed at the wreckage. “What the fuck, that was my favorite drone!”

Caitlin raised her eyebrows. “You have a favorite drone?”

“Who  _ doesn’t  _ have a favorite drone?” Hartley frowned. “At least I still have more, but…” He looked sulkily at the shattered remains scattered across the airstrip. “That was my  _ favorite.  _ You’re paying me back for this, Allen. Mark my words.”

Barry skidded to a halt next to him, making Cisco jump but not flinch back. It was easier not to flinch away from Barry when you were already tracking his vibrations and his heartbeat and knew exactly where he was at every second. It was less frightening and startling that way.

“Your reaction to different stimuli at superspeed is still improving, and getting better every day,” Wells complimented, and Cisco couldn’t stop a little shiver. If there was one person who was still unequivocally a master, a  _ Supervisor,  _ it was Wells. Barry seemed to trust him, as much as any Asset could trust the person who held their life in their hands (Cisco tried to remind himself that Barry was  _ not  _ an Asset, that there were no more Assets), but Cisco… Cisco  _ couldn’t.  _ Something about him felt like Eiling. It felt wrong. Twisted. Out of place.

“It’s still not enough,” Barry sighed, although he looked pleased with the compliment. That, Cisco realized, was another sign of someone being a-not an Asset, not here, but-what else  _ could  _ he call it? He shivered. Being dependent on someone again for praise and food and money was familiar for all Assets, at least in some respects. Barry must’ve had a lot of Supervisors over the years.

“He broke my favorite drone!” Hartley protested. “My baby! This is  _ not  _ the time for compliments! Lucinda is dead!”

Barry, Wells, and Caitlin all stared at him. Cisco bit his lip and hoped Lucinda wasn’t anything actually  _ alive. _

Barry broke the silence, giggling as Hartley’s cheeks turned bright red. “You named your drone?"

“She was my favorite, of course I named her,” Hartley snapped. He hugged his tablet tightly to his chest. “It’s none of your business what I do in my free time.”

“Well, I-I’m sorry I broke, uh-” Barry snorted and covered his mouth with his hand,  _ “Lucinda,  _ but I didn’t really know what else to do.”

“You asked me to bring it, so I brought it,” Hartley sniffed. “The missiles were Cisco’s idea, anyways.”

All eyes fell on Cisco, who made himself small and blushed a little bit. “I-I’m sorry, Hartley told me to make the designs difficult…”

Wells sighed and shook his head a little bit before turning back to Barry. “As I was saying, even if it may feel like a small improvement, or like it’s not enough, it will be if you keep improving at this rate. If you keep improving like you are and staying focused like you are, you  _ will  _ be ready the next time the man in the yellow suit comes around.”

“Well, I’m not ready to be done for the day, that’s for sure,” Barry sighed. “Quick snack break, and then I wanna get right back into it again. How many more drones do you have back there, Hartley?”

“Only two of them,” Hartley huffed, still bitter about the fresh loss of Lucinda, “and you’re  _ not  _ allowed to break them, you hear me?” He smirked a little bit. “Not that you’ll be able to, since they’ve got  _ lasers,  _ but-”

“No lasers,” Wells and Caitlin said at the same time.

“They want to avenge their fallen sister on the battlefield!” Hartley protested. “They need lasers to do that, Caitlin!”

“Oh, my god-they’re drones,” Caitlin sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose and rolling her eyes. “They’re not alive. They don’t have feelings. They don’t want to avenge anybody. Which means you’re not using the lasers unless they’re completely, one-hundred-percent harmless, which from your tone does not seem to be the case. So no lasers.”

Cisco rediscovered his now lukewarm thermos of hot chocolate underneath Hartley’s chair and hoped that Caitlin and Wells wouldn’t be mad when they found out that the lasers had also been his idea.

* * *

“Snart is back?” Hartley frowned and leaned back in his chair, kicking his feet up onto the desk in the Cortex. Caitlin shoved his legs down a few seconds later. “He doesn’t even have any metahuman powers. What does he think he’s doing?”

“I’m less worried about any damage he’ll do than what Car-sorry, than what Cisco’s reaction will be when he finds out Snart is back,” Caitlin worried. She wrung her hands. “He  _ built  _ the cold gun, remember? And he felt so guilty when he found out it had been used to hurt people…”

“Then we just won’t tell him Snart and the cold gun are back. It’s not a great option, but he hasn’t really asked about any of the other criminals we’ve faced, so… It’ll be fine if we just don’t tell him and then tell Joe not to tell him,” Barry sighed. “The less he knows about what we’re doing, the better. Hartley, can you work on trying to find Snart?”

Cisco was currently at Joe’s house, alone with Iris-Joe not being in the house was the only reason Iris was over, as she was still avoiding both of them after finding out that they’d been keeping the secret of Barry being the Flash away from her for so long. None of Barry’s texts or calls got any reply and she made a point not to come visit him or her father at work, just Eddie.

“I’m not sure that’s the best idea.” Wells folded his hands in his lap.

Barry looked at him, eyebrows furrowed. “You don’t think we should try to stop him? He’s a criminal. A murderer.”

“I don’t think  _ we  _ should, no.” Wells sighed. “Last time you and Snart fought, a train was derailed. People could have died. Right now, you’re working on a way to get faster, to improve your speed and your reflexes. That’s a commitment  _ you  _ made. Focus on that, not on a criminal with a cold gun. Let the police handle Snart while we keep working on a way to make you faster. Who is more dangerous, Barry-Leonard Snart, or the man who killed your mother?”

Barry swallowed and looked down. “...The man in yellow. But-what if something-”

“The police will handle it,” Wells said firmly. “Instead of trying to find Snart, Hartley is going to work on something for the police to use to stop him, isn’t he?”

Wells’ voice took on a hard edge that Barry didn’t like. Hartley’s jaw clenched and for a moment something dark and angry crossed his face. And then it was gone, just as quickly as it had been there, and he nodded curtly to his boss.

“Sure. I’ll get right on that.”

Wells saw the hesitation on Barry’s face. “Barry, if you choose to go after Snart or not-that’s your choice. And whatever you choose, we will back you up on it. But the man in the yellow suit is a greater threat to  _ all  _ of us than Snart is. Don’t just think about your rivalries. Think about the safety of this city.”

Barry sighed and nodded a tiny bit. “Okay,” he said almost inaudibly before clearing his throat and speaking louder, “I’m going to Joe’s. I’ll tell Cisco ‘hi’ for all of you, and if Iris lets me say anything to her I’ll tell her, too.”

Caitlin waved, Wells narrowed his eyes, and Hartley nodded a tiny bit, but Barry was already gone.

* * *

“Snart took a 2.5  _ million  _ dollar painting?” Caitlin shook her head slowly. “Who pays that kind of money for  _ art?” _

“Rachel and Osgood Rathaway, apparently,” Barry sighed, crossing his arms and drumming the fingers of his right hand against the upper part of his left arm.

Hartley stiffened before flopping forward and letting his forehead crack harshly against the edge of the desk in front of him. Barry jumped and Caitlin winced as she leaned over to ask if he was okay. Hartley groaned. “Oh, Christ. They stole that painting from my  _ parents?” _

Barry and Caitlin exchanged looks.

Out of respect for Hartley, Barry had never actually asked or looked up what had happened between Hartley and his parents, although he could make a few guesses. He knew that Caitlin knew, but Caitlin and Hartley had a weird history. The only two scientists that had stuck around out of  _ hundreds,  _ almost a thousand. Barry wondered if they’d been friends before it was just them. He’d never asked.

There were a lot of things about Hartley that he didn’t know. He certainly knew less about him than he knew about Caitlin. Barry only knew where Hartley lived because he was the designated ‘driver’ whenever Hartley got drunk. He wasn’t like Caitlin, who invited him over for drinks and dinner and movie nights. Just because they saw each other outside of ‘work’ didn’t make them close.

“Stole it and are probably going to resell it on the black market in a few months,” Barry said instead of asking any uncomfortable questions. “The Rathaways called the police, but… Those shields you made, Hartley, they weren’t a match for Snart’s new partner. He’s got a fire gun, apparently. A powerful little handheld flamethrower that’s probably about as hot as Snart’s gun is cold.”

“Oh, great,” Hartley lifted his face and took off his glasses, rubbing his forehead. “Now the police hate me, too. Tell your hot boss I’ll try to fix the shields so they’re resistant to flamethrowers too, okay?”

“My-wait, what?” Barry blinked. “My  _ what?” _

“You hot boss,” Hartley repeated, putting his glasses back on. “The one at the demonstration for the shields.” 

“I have no idea who you’re talking about. I wasn’t at the demonstration, remember?” Barry pointed out. “You’re not talking about Joe, are you? Because if you are-that’s weird, and he’s not my boss.”

“Joe  _ is  _ hot but I’m fine with you not admitting it,” Hartley shrugged. “And I meant the captain.”

Barry choked.  _ “Singh?” _

“Yeah, I think that was his name.” Hartley shrugged again. Caitlin and Barry kept looking at him and he threw up his hands. “Just because I have a boyfriend now doesn’t mean I don’t still have  _ eyes!  _ It’s not like I’m going to suck his dick or anything, I was just making an observation, jeez!”

“Your, uh, opinions on him aside,” Barry said slowly, “I will tell him that you’re going to do that.” He shuddered and sped out, calling over his shoulder, “I’m  _ not  _ telling him you think he’s hot, though!”

“Fine by me!” Hartley called, rolling his eyes behind his glasses.

Caitlin shook her head again and sighed. “Hey, Hartley, you wouldn’t mind coming to Jitters with me, would you? I’m meeting someone there who might… Who might have a lead into what happened with Ronnie.”

Hartley frowned. “I thought you-”

“I know. I know. But-I have to see if he’s really in there. I have to help him. He’s scared and alone and I need to help set him free.” Caitlin lowered her gaze to the floor. “It won’t even take very long. I just want to see what he knows about what Ronnie told me before he, ah, left. He co-wrote an eight hundred word paper on it. If anybody can tell me how to help Ronnie, it’s him.”

“Fine, I’ll come,” Hartley relented. “Just in case he turns out to be a weirdo. A lot of scientists are, you know.”

“Takes one to know one, huh?” Caitlin smiled and pulled Hartley out of his chair.

“What’s  _ that  _ supposed to mean?!”

* * *

Jason Rusch sat down in one of the comfortable seats near the window and waited for the woman who had called him to show up. He’d brought a book and had made sure to get there about twenty minutes early just in case  _ she  _ got there early. He’d also made sure that there was absolutely nobody following him on his way Jitters-the last thing he needed was for the army to crash his meeting.

“Jason?” Someone called, and Jason closed his book, a little surprised at who it was.

“Hart? What’re you doing here?”

“My friend’s here to meet someone who she thinks can help her,” Hartley explained as he crossed Jitters to give Jason a hug and a kiss on the cheek. “She didn’t tell me his name, just that-oh, fuck, she’s here to meet  _ you,  _ isn’t she?”

Jason laughed and bent a little to give Hartley a more satisfactory kiss. “Probably. All I know is that she works at STAR Labs-I’m not sure exactly  _ what  _ she wants to talk to me about, but… She seemed nice on the phone.”

“Hartley, who’s this?” Caitlin tried to force herself not to sound excited. She’d met some of Hartley’s  _ exes  _ before and only one current boyfriend (who was now ex), but despite their friendship she didn’t actually know a whole lot about his personal life outside of what proximity had forced him to share.

“Jason Rusch,” Hartley introduced. “The guy you’re here to meet.”

“Oh!” Caitlin stuck out her hand to shake Jason’s. “It’s nice to meet you. Sorry, I didn’t know the two of you knew each other. Hartley’s my coworker, I invited him along to help me ask you a few questions about Firestorm.”

Jason tensed, the happy smile slipping off his face. “You want to talk about Firestorm?”

Caitlin nodded. “Someone I’m close to may have something to do with it. He’s in a lot of trouble and I  _ need  _ to help him.”

Jason glanced around. Nobody seemed to be paying any extra attention to them, outside of a little baby boy who was staring at Hartley. But a little kid probably wasn’t involved in some kind of military ambush situation, right? “Is this-is this place safe?”

Hartley squeezed Jason’s hand. “It’s safe.” He was used to Jason’s paranoia about people, especially the government, watching him. Hartley didn’t  _ encourage  _ it per say but-the government was full of shady people and it made Jason feel better when Hartley did things like cover the little cameras on his tablet and laptop with a piece of tape. And really, that was the only thing that mattered to Hartley. How Jason felt. “Caitlin wants to help someone, and I think they have better things to do than watch us over a Jitters camera.”

Caitlin frowned. “Uh… What’s going on?”

Hartley shook his head.  _ Not now. _

“I’ll tell you what I know,” Jason said reluctantly, “but Hartley stays. And comes home with me afterward.”

Having Hartley around made him feel… Safer. There was a safety in numbers, after all, even if it was just one more person.

“...Sure, I guess.” Caitlin blinked. “What do you know about Firestorm?”

Jason sat back down in his chair. Caitlin sat down across from him and Hartley sat next to him after a brief moment of hesitation while he wondered if it would be appropriate to sit down in Jason’s lap in public before deciding that while he didn’t care if it was appropriate or not, he really didn’t want to make Jason uncomfortable when he was already so antsy. 

“The FIRESTORM project was all about transmutation,” Jason began, wringing his hands together before Hartley reached out to squeeze them for comfort. “Taking one thing, altering it at a molecular level, and turning it into another thing. We had some rudimentary success with our phase one trials-things like salt, grains of sand, little stuff. Nothing too dangerous. And  _ no  _ human or animal trials. But Professor Stein said that we should-that we should move ahead. Work faster. He didn’t believe in baby steps.”

“Professor Martin Stein?” Caitlin’s brows knit together. “He was the co-author of the paper.”

“Yeah, he was our team leader. The inspiration for all of us. I think I knew him better than most-we were friends, not just coworkers. We trusted each other. I went to his house for dinner sometimes, met his wife, his daughter-but I don’t know what he was thinking when he told us to skip ahead to stage three.” Jason shook his head.

Something in Caitlin’s stomach twisted. “Which was… Not  _ human  _ trials?”

“Oh, god, no,” Jason shook his head again, much faster this time. “Stein was a genius, but he had ethics. Please don’t mistake me saying I think he made some bad calls as an attack on his entire character. But… Stage three… We melted a concrete wall.” Caitlin’s eyes went wide. Hartley tightened his grip on Jason’s hand. “I don’t know if that was why the university threatened to shut us down, but they did. So Professor Stein published his paper- _ our  _ paper-without asking their permission, because he knew they’d never give it to him. They went nuts.”

He looked around again. Caitlin hummed encouragingly, trying to categorize everything she was learning while Hartley leaned over to whisper something soft and inaudible to her into Jason’s ear. “So… Is the university why you’re so paranoid?”

“No,” Jason swallowed, “they’re not. A few days after that, Stein left to go talk to a friend of his to secure private backing.”

“Who?” Caitlin asked.

“I have no idea,” Jason admitted. “He didn’t tell me or anybody else working on the project. He just said he’d call me later. And  _ no one  _ has seen or heard from him since. Not even his wife and his daughter. Clarissa and Lily mean the whole world to him. He would never just leave them like that.”

“What do you think happened to him?” Caitlin shifted, fighting the urge to look over her shoulder. It was hard not to feel like she was being watched.

“All  _ I  _ know for sure is that the next day the army showed up and confiscated  _ all  _ of our research. I’m amazed you were even able to find our paper online. I thought for sure they would’ve wiped it from the face of the Earth.” Jason’s grip on Hartley’s hand was tight enough to be painful, but Hartley didn’t make a sound. He already knew all of this. He let out a small, dry laugh. “So, Caitlin-tell me, do you think I’m being too paranoid? Or not paranoid enough?”

Caitlin and Hartley exchanged glances. Caitlin misinterpreted his tiny head shake and opened her mouth, ready to ask more questions, but Hartley cut her off. “Caitlin, I think it would be best if you left.”

“But-” She looked at Jason, who was back to glancing around nervously like someone would come out of the shadows and go for his throat at any second. She wondered if that was how Bette had felt. Like a hunted animal with a hunter she couldn’t see coming. “...Alright.”

_ ‘Thank you,’  _ Hartley mouthed to her as she walked away. He rubbed his thumb over the back of Jason’s hand in a small circle.

Caitlin would be fine on her own. Jason, on the other hand, was going to need someone to make sure he even made it home without having a panic attack. It may have been Jason’s choice to tell Caitlin (and retell Hartley) about the FIRESTORM project, but that didn’t make it any easier. Jason would be fine in the long run, he always was, but that didn’t matter in the present. Not really.

Oh well. It’s not like it would matter in a few days.

* * *

It’s hard for Cisco to read a room sometimes. It’s hard for him to tell what emotions people are feeling on a good day, unless they outright tell him. All his siblings have that problem-if Cisco would have allowed himself to remember things from Before, he would’ve remembered Armando chasing after the big kids who stole his backpack because he thought they genuinely wanted to see it and be his friend. Would have remembered Dante hiding underneath the bleachers from kids trying to find him after he mistakenly thought they wanted him to join their game.

It was strange. They couldn’t read faces so they got tricked easier but sometimes the people were so mean  _ because  _ they couldn’t read faces. Cisco couldn’t ever figure out why people were mean about that. Armando was the best person he knew and  _ he  _ couldn’t read faces at all and did things that other kids thought were weird like sit alone at recess and watch the girls playing with a weird look on his face or put his arms back in his sweatshirt sleeves and flap them around. Just because Armando did weird things it didn’t mean he wasn’t the best big brother ever. Why didn’t everybody else understand that?

But Cisco didn’t need to know how to perfectly understand faces in order to tell that everyone inside STAR Labs (and when, he wondered, had he stopped thinking of it like it was one of Eiling’s facilities?) was angry and afraid.

Hartley didn’t seem to be able to keep still, spinning a large pen around over and over and over again in his hands. He wasn’t saying anything and his face was pale and Cisco worried for a second that he was sick. It was still so  _ strange  _ to worry about someone who wasn’t an Asset.

Barry was pacing back and forth, rubbing his forehead and the bridge of his nose with one hand. He wasn’t using his powers, but Cisco could feel them underneath his skin, trying to get out. Every now and then Barry would stop and take a deep breath and open his mouth like he was about to say something before looking at Cisco, shaking his head, and then continuing to pace without making a sound outside of the occasional noise of frustration as he dug his knuckles into his temples.

Cisco couldn’t stop himself from making some small anxious movements and sounds of his own, body responding to the tension in the room. He rocked back and forth, not crawling out from the little table he was hiding under to avoid getting in anybody’s way.

The only one who wasn’t moving was Wells. He stayed stock still, watching Barry intently and adjusting his glasses on his face every few minutes. His hands were in his lap with his fingers steepled together, lips pursed and eyes narrowed behind his glasses. Cisco didn’t like it. People were supposed to  _ move,  _ staying still like that and not even speaking felt strange and wrong.

“I can’t do this,” Barry said softly, breaking the silence. “I  _ can’t  _ do this.”

“Sure you can,” Hartley scoffed, voice equally low. “You’ve fought Snart before. Rory’s new but nothing you can’t handle. Get in, take them down, make them tell you where Caitlin is, and then get her out.”

“It’s not that  _ simple,”  _ Barry snapped, pressing his fists into the sides of his head even harder than before. Cisco noticed that he did that a lot when he was stressed. Or afraid. “What if she’s hurt? Snart and Rory-they won’t hesitate to hurt innocent people. She might be dying, if she’s not dead already. We need to find her but-”

“I can find her.”

All eyes turned to Cisco.

He swallowed and hugged himself and looked away. “I can find her,” he repeated. “If you give me something that belongs to her. I can find her.”

“I’m not so sure that’s a good-” Barry began, but Hartley was already standing.

“Here,” he said, shoving a fancy silver and blue fountain pen, the same one he’d been fiddling with, into Cisco’s hand. Cisco tried not to flinch. “This is Caitlin’s. Do your thing.”

“I’m  _ really  _ not so sure that’s a good-” Barry tried to say again. Hartley elbowed him in the gut and looked at Cisco intensely.

Cisco swallowed. “I’ll try.”

He curled his fingers tightly around the pen, taking a few shaking breaths and closing his eyes. He’d vibed on whatever Eiling wanted him to vibe off of for years, this wasn’t any different. No different. No different. No different. Feel the vibrations. Feel the warm feeling and the pressure at the back of your skull. Take a deep breath. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

Cisco opened his eyes as his vision went blue. 

_ Cold floor, cold walls-no, no-yes, cold floor, cold walls, warm air in contrast, someone struggling and making little squeaking noises (through a gag, those were the noises you made through a gag, Cisco was well aware of what that sounded like-). _

_ Tick tick tick tick tick tick-weird vibrations coming from below the chair that made Cisco’s head hurt. The pressure on his brain got tighter as he looked around, trying to memorize everything he was seeing before- _

His vision snapped back to normal and for a moment his head felt like there was a spike getting driven diagonally through it. Cisco groaned and clutched at his head, trying to breathe through the raw feeling in his throat and through the blood dribbling out of his nose. Something paper and soft was pressed into Cisco’s other hand, and he held it up to his nose gratefully. “I-I’m sorry.”

“What are you sorry for?” Barry asked gently, reaching out to carefully tuck some of Cisco’s hair behind his ear.

“I didn’t see very much,” Cisco whispered, looking down. “I-I saw _enough,_ I know where to go, and I know there’s something _tick tick tick_ -ing underneath her chair, but-I can try again if you-if you want? I can try to see more. I can try to do better.”

“You did great,” Barry promised. He glared at Hartley and then pulled Cisco into a hug, ignoring the way the blood from Cisco’s nose got smeared onto his shirt at the shoulder. “Okay? You did perfect. We’re very glad you felt comfortable enough to do that, and I’m  _ super  _ proud of you for being willing to do something like that to help Caitlin.”

Barry’s phone buzzed in his pocket and Cisco winced. The vibrations felt funny, and he was still disoriented from the vision. It felt like there was something humming inside his chest. That had never happened after a vibe before. Maybe it was because of the ticking under the chair, the vibrations within vibrations that had jarred him enough to throw him out of the vibe.

Distantly, he heard Barry answer the phone and heard Joe’s voice telling him something. Heard Barry say that they had a lead on Caitlin. Heard Joe say he would come to STAR Labs to help them follow up on it. Heard Barry say goodbye. Heard Barry wonder if he should tell Iris what he was about to do, wonder if she didn’t already know. Heard Barry take his red, red, red like blood Asset-suit and leave.

Cisco looked down at the blood on his hands and on the fountain pen and on the paper from the nosebleed, at the blood dripping down onto the smooth STAR Labs floor (the smooth  _ facility  _ floor) and passed out on the floor of the Cortex.

* * *

Cisco woke up on Joe’s couch.

The dried blood was gone from his face, like someone had cleaned it off with a wet towel, and there was a pillow under his head and a blanket pulled up over him and tucked tightly around his shoulders. Cocooning him safely in warm, soft blue fabric. He blinked his eyes open and reached up to touch his own face, whimpering a little bit. “Wh… What...”

“We don’t know,” Joe said softly, and Cisco snapped his head around fast to look at him. Everything still kind of sounded like it was underwater, but even through his slightly blurry vision he could see Joe, Barry, Eddie, and Iris all crowded around him, although Iris was only looking at him and appeared not to notice that Barry was dividing his attention up neatly between her and Cisco. “You passed out at STAR Labs before I got there. They had you in the medbay there but you woke up and panicked so I brought you here and you passed out again. Do you remember that?”

Cisco shook his head. “Am I-am I in trouble?”

“No, of course not!” Barry exclaimed. “We’re all just really worried about you. So are Hartley and Caitlin, but they’re at the hospital right now.”

“You’re all worried… About me?” Cisco tilted his head as well as he could, squishing his ear into the pillow.

“Of course,” Iris said softly, reaching out to squeeze Cisco’s hand before deciding not to at the last minute. “We’re worried about Caitlin, too, but Hartley told us she was just in shock and there’s no injuries except for some bruising and chafing. She’ll be out of the hospital in a few hours.”

“I-I did good by helping?” Cisco asked hopefully. The part of him that ached for praise from someone, from anybody, perked up a little bit.

“From what I heard, you did  _ great,”  _ Iris smiled. “We’re all so proud of you.”

“But no more using your powers for awhile, okay?” Barry chewed his lip. “You can use those blasts of yours if you need to defend yourself, nobody will blame you for wanting to protect yourself and you won’t get in trouble for it, but-it’s probably for the best if you don’t have any, uh, visions for the time being. While Caitlin figures out why you keep getting nosebleeds and why your ears bleed.”

Cisco blinked. “It doesn’t matter, does it? They-they  _ always  _ bleed when I use my powers. That’s just how-that’s just what happens.”

He’d never had any reason to question it before. It was like the sky being blue or blood being red or his hair being black. It was just a fact of life. That was just what happened when he used his powers. Sometimes it hurt, sometimes it didn’t, but-who cared if it hurt? It didn’t  _ matter  _ if it hurt. Why did they care? Was this a trick to get him to stop using his powers so he wouldn’t see something that they didn’t want him to see? Were they trying to hide something from him?

“Well, it makes us worried when it happens,” Barry explained gently. “We get worried when we see blood on you, and even though nosebleeds are pretty harmless they’re never fun to have and we don’t know if they’re a sign of some other health problem. We can’t stop you from using your powers, and we  _ won’t  _ stop you by force, not ever, but-we’d like it if you didn’t try to get visions. Just for the time being.”

“Vibes,” Cisco corrected softly. He curled up on his side on the couch, brushing his hair out of his face and pulling some of it out of his mouth. “They’re called vibes. And-and I can’t always-what if I get one on accident? And my nose starts bleeding? But I can’t control it and when I come out of it you’re all angry? Will I be in trouble?”

“Of course not!” Eddie threw his hands out and Cisco flinched. Eddie hastily tucked his hands behind his back. “Sorry, I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. But you’re not gonna be in trouble here, I promise. Joe and Barry just want you to be safe. They want you to take care of yourself. We all do. If you slip up and, um- _ vibe _ accidentally, nobody’s going to  _ hurt  _ you for it. We just don’t want you doing it on purpose until the nosebleeds stop. Right?”

“Right,” Joe nodded. “Today-today you did it for a  _ very  _ good reason and we’re very, very proud of you. Caitlin’s so, so grateful. Without your help, we probably wouldn’t have found her until it was too late. But that was a special circumstance, and even though we’re all very glad you helped, we don’t want you to put yourself in danger like that again.”

“I just wanted to help,” Cisco whispered. His voice cracked. His heart felt like it was crawling up his throat into his mouth. “All of you were so scared and upset and I just wanted to help make things  _ better.  _ I just wanted to help find Doc-I just wanted to-to help find Caitlin. You were all angry and I-I didn’t want you to be angry. I really didn’t mean to do anything wrong. I’m sorry.”

_ (“Your heart has always been too big,  _ mijo.” _ Cisco ducked his head down as his mom cleaned some dirt off his nose. “You need to learn when to pick your battles.” _

“Dante  _ said it was a good idea,” Cisco mumbled, hugging his knees and pulling his face away from his mother’s hands. “He was mad too! It was just a little bird, it wasn’t hurting anybody, and they were trying to chase it into the street before Dante put it back up in its nest! And then they were calling him names because he got mad at them, so I started yelling, and then that big boy-Jaime, he’s in  _ high school,  _ a  _ senior!- _ said that he was gonna find Armando and make him sorry that he had brothers like us.” _

_ His mom pulled him into a hug. “I know. The principal told me what happened, Cisco. I know it’s hard to get picked on.” _

_ Cisco swallowed. “Why is everyone so mean to Dante and Armando? Why can’t people just get along with us?” _

_ “People pick on those they think are different. Wrong. Not like everyone else.” His mom smoothed his hair down as she pulled him even closer and squeezed him tighter. “People who are special. Like your brothers. Like you.”) _

“You did absolutely nothing wrong,” Barry promised. “Okay? You did great. You’re not in trouble for helping us find Caitlin. You saved her life, okay? You told us about that bomb, even if you didn’t know that that’s what you heard underneath her chair. Cisco, listen to me-you’re a good person with a good heart and we’re _so_ _glad_ you helped us find Caitlin, alright?”

Cisco chewed on the inside of his cheek and tried to calm down. “...Alright.”

He wondered if they would be mad at him if he told them about the person in the basement with the rusty spike that he had vibed. How afraid they had been. Cisco wondered if he would get in trouble for telling them because he had forced himself to have a vision without their permission or if when they found out later he would get in even  _ more  _ trouble for not telling them.

He bit his tongue. For now, he’d keep his mouth shut about the basement. For now. For now.

* * *

“Barry, hey!”

Barry glanced up from his paperwork. “Eddie?” He spotted what his friend was carrying in one hand and his heart damn near melted. “Please say those burgers are for me.”

Eddie grinned and set it down in front of him on top of the papers. “They are. I figured you deserved it after taking down Snart and Rory out there. You did great, Bar.” He waited until Barry had a mouthful of burger before clearing his throat and saying ten little words that made Barry’s stomach drop. “I have something I want to talk to you about.”

Barry swallowed his bite of burger. “...You do?”

“Iris, too.” Eddie glanced over to the doorway and Barry followed his gaze, shoulders tensing as he made eye contact with his (now maybe former?) best friend. He froze and opened his mouth to ask if this was a trap. Eddie rushed to reassure him. “We’re not gonna attack you or anything. Iris and I-we just need to talk to you. About what you told Iris and about what you told both of us. Mostly Iris needs to talk to you, really. We’re both still coming to terms with the Flash thing. But she wants to talk to you about the… Other thing. You know.”

Barry winced and cringed back a little, setting his burger down slowly. So Iris  _ had  _ told Eddie that Barry was in love with her. Great. And obviously they both knew he was the Flash.

Iris walked over and, seeing no other seating option, sat herself down in Eddie’s lap. Eddie looked pleased, and Barry felt something in his gut grow tighter as he watched Eddie smile up at her in that  _ infuriating  _ way that he did that lit up the whole entire room. He suddenly regretted eating the burger, since it seemed to have turned to lead inside of his stomach.

“I can’t forgive you,” Iris said before he could say anything. Barry looked down at the floor and retreated into himself. “I can’t forgive you, okay? I was mad at Eddie, too, for a little while, until he told me that he’d only known for a little bit longer than I had and had told you to tell me the entire time. And, god, don’t even get me started on Dad, but-” She took a deep breath. “I can’t forgive you, not yet. Okay?”

“Okay,” Barry whispered. His tongue felt numb. “I-I wanted to tell you sooner, alright? I really, really wanted to tell you. I  _ did  _ tell you, once. At super-speed. So you couldn’t really hear me. But every time I got the chance to really tell you I just couldn’t get the thought out of my head that I was putting you in danger by telling you. That if something happened to you because you knew it was the Flash then it would all be on my shoulders. I know-I know that me  _ wanting  _ to tell you doesn’t change the fact that I didn’t do it.”

“You should have told me,” Iris said firmly. “I know that it would have put me in danger. I know that knowing now  _ has  _ put me in danger. But I’m the daughter of a cop. I can handle a little danger. You know that.  _ I  _ was the one protecting  _ you  _ from bullies back when we were kids, Bar, and that pretty much hasn’t changed.”

Eddie still hadn’t said anything, though he did reach up to squeeze Iris’s shoulder comfortingly. Barry looked away and studied the building outside of the window to his right. “You know,” he began, voice breaking a little bit. He coughed and shook his head. “You know, before all of this happened, if somebody had asked me which one of us was more likely to be a superhero, I  _ definitely  _ would’ve said you.”

Eddie nodded fast in agreement.  _ “You’re  _ more the damsel-in-distress type, Bar.”

Iris closed her eyes and when she opened them again she was blinking away tears. Barry fought the urge to reach out and wipe them away gently like he might have done a few weeks ago. “There’s… The other thing, too.”

“I’m sorry I told you that,” Barry said honestly. “It made things awkward between us. I know the Flash thing also made things awkward, but-this-”

“I’m happy with Eddie,” Iris cut him off. “You understand that, don’t you?”

Barry nodded fast. “Of course I do!” He looked back and forth between them. “Who  _ wouldn’t  _ be happy with Eddie?” That hot sickly jealous feeling was back in his stomach, and Barry tried to push it down. “I’m not going to try to-to, like, break you guys up or anything. I know it may seem like that’s why I told you about my feelings for you but I swear it wasn’t. I know you’re happy with Eddie, and all I want is for you to be happy.”

_ I want to stop having dreams about you. I want to stop having dreams about  _ both  _ of you. But I don’t know how. I don’t know if I can. I keep having them and I can’t stop having them and I know I shouldn’t be having them but it’s like every time I close my eyes all I can see are your smiles. _

Iris reached out, and Barry put his hand in hers, not knowing what else to do. She shook it and then dropped his hand. “I know you do. We’re still friends, Barry. Even though you kept all these secrets from me, it doesn’t change the fact that we’re friends. Which means I  _ do  _ love you, Bar. Maybe not in the way you’re hoping I do, but I do.” Now it was her turn to look away 

“I love you, Iris.” Barry reached out and hesitantly squeezed her knee. “I don’t know if it’ll change. The kind of love I feel. But-you’re happy with Eddie, and that’s what matters to me. That the two of you are happy together.”

Iris got up, freeing Eddie and giving Barry a brief hug. “Finish your dinner, Bar. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

She left without another word, although she did pause in the hallway to wait for Eddie.

To Barry’s surprise, Eddie  _ also  _ gave him a hug, although his was much longer and warmer, and Barry tucked his face into his friend’s shoulder for a second. He swallowed. Eddie smelled good. Iris had also smelled good. That wasn’t the kind of thing you were supposed to notice about people, was it? It felt creepy to notice how your friends smelled.

Iris slipped her hand into Eddie’s when he left and joined her in the hallway. She got up on her toes to give him a kiss.

“We should tell him soon,” Eddie sighed. “I feel bad for not doing it tonight."

“I’m not ready,” Iris reminded him. “I… I don’t know when I will be. But I’m not right now.”

Eddie bent down and gave her another kiss, pausing and pulling back a little but keeping his forehead pressed against hers. “Not until you’re ready,” he promised. “Not until we’re both ready.”

* * *

“Cisco?” Caitlin swallowed. “Can I talk to you?”

Cisco fiddled with a red Lego piece. He didn’t look up at her but he nodded. “Yes M-I’m sorry, I meant-yes Caitlin.”

She sat down on the bed next to him but didn’t look at him, which Cisco was grateful for. Today was one of the days when it was too hard to be looked at. He had those days a lot Before. So did Armando. But Eiling had gotten mad at him for having them. Just like he got mad at Cisco for making eye contact or for letting himself be seen.

It had been so, so hard to figure out what Eiling actually  _ wanted  _ from him.

“I just wanted to thank you in person,” Caitlin said softly. Cisco went still, confused. “You saved my life. I don’t know if Hartley would’ve been able to find me if you hadn’t-” She waved one of her hands. “You know. Had a vision of me. So thank you.”

“I-I was just doing my job, Ma’am-I mean-I was just doing my job, Caitlin,” Cisco responded nervously.

“And what job is that?” Caitlin sounded confused, and Cisco held his breath for a second. But she seemed to be genuinely asking, and Cisco wondered if this was a test to see if he knew his place or not. Some things never changed, and Doctors being  _ tricky  _ was one of those things. Even if Caitlin wasn’t really a Doctor just like Cisco (and Barry) wasn’t really an Asset anymore and like how Wells wasn’t supposed to be a Supervisor anymore.

“To keep my-my Handlers happy,” Cisco answered honestly. “I know you are-I know you are a Doctor, Caitlin, but that is still  _ like  _ being a Handler, and my other Handlers and Barry were all so upset that you were gone that I needed to fix it. I needed to make it better.”

“I thought you understood that we weren’t your Handlers,” Caitlin murmured. “That we’re not like those awful people who hurt you.”

Cisco set down his red Lego piece and picked up a yellow one. “You are not like those people,” he agreed, “but some of the Rules are still the same. Rules are constant. Keep everyone else happy no matter what, if ‘everyone else’ is Handlers and Doctors and Supervisors.” And, Cisco added in his mind, Assets. That had not been an official Rule from Eiling, but it had been one of… It had been one of Bette’s. Assets stuck together. They watched out for each other. They kept each other safe. “That is-that is a  _ constant  _ Rule, Caitlin. Ma’am.”

“Not here,” Caitlin said gently. “Here, we care about  _ you  _ happiness. Your happiness is more important than ours. I’m very, very glad that you saved me, because it  _ was  _ you even if Hartley and Joe were the ones who actually got me out of there, but-you didn’t have to do that because you wanted to please us. The next time something like this happens- _ keinehora- _ I don’t want you to feel like you’ll be-be punished, or something, for not helping. If you still want to help whoever is in trouble, that’s very noble, but you don’t  _ have  _ to, alright?”

“But-if it’s one of  _ you-”  _ Cisco frowned and reached up with his free hand to pull on his hair. No, no, this was all wrong-“I owe you. I owe my Handlers. For not killing me. That’s-I  _ owe,  _ so-”

“No.” Caitlin’s hand clenched into a fist on her knee but she forced it to relax again before Cisco could see it and think she was going to hurt him. “You don’t owe us. Okay? You don’t owe any of your ‘Handlers’ for not killing you. That’s-no. No. That’s not how this works, okay? Not killing someone is-it’s basic decency, I don’t know how else to describe it so you’ll understand.”

“Even if I do not owe Handlers for not killing, I still owe all of you for feeding me,” Cisco pointed out. “For-for not hurting me. It is the same as owing for not killing.”

Didn’t Caitlin understand that this was how it was? Cisco didn’t deserve to live because he was an Asset. A metahuman. He didn’t deserve to be alive. Oh, he didn’t want to die, not anymore, not since he’d come to Joe’s house and tasted some of that delicious food and realized that maybe things were going to be different, be  _ better,  _ and he wasn’t going to try to hurt himself anymore, not unless he was ordered to do it, but…

How come she didn’t understand? Even if she wasn’t  _ his  _ Doctor she  _ was  _ still a Doctor, and all Doctors learned how to manipulate and hurt their Assets. All Doctors learned that Assets owed them. Just like all Handlers did. Just like all Enforcers did. Just like all Supervisors did.

“You don’t owe us a damn thing,” Caitlin told him firmly.  _ “Nothing,  _ you understand? And I know Joe, Hartley, Barry, Iris, and Wells would tell you the exact same thing, okay? You don’t owe us for showing you basic kindness, Carlos-shit, sorry-” She shook her head. “I’m still a little-off. Cisco. I’m sorry.”

“It’s-it’s okay,” Cisco lied. He didn’t understand. What did that  _ mean,  _ that he didn’t owe them for showing him kindness? Of course he did! Everyone who showed him kindness was someone he owed. Eiling’s people had drilled that into his head countless times. That was just the way it was. That was just-just how things were. You couldn’t question that.

These people, Cisco realized, questioned a lot of the things that Cisco thought of as constants. Like the nosebleeds. Like going hungry. Like being beaten. Like hurting. Like owing your Supervisor and your Handlers and your Doctors for not hurting you. Like  _ cruelty.  _

But they were all non-Assets, except for Barry. They  _ made  _ the Rules and enforced them. How come they didn’t know them? Even if they had decided not to hurt him for the time being, even if they used his  _ real  _ name, the one he hadn’t heard anybody say out loud in  _ years,  _ they were still Handlers. They should have still known the Rules. Or at least known enough of them to know that Cisco wasn’t making them up. Why didn’t they understand?

Barry would understand, Cisco decided. Just like Bette had understood. That Assets, even if they were not  _ called  _ Assets, stuck together and kept each other safe. Took care of each other. Barry would understand the concept of owing a Handler. He had to understand that.

Yes, Barry would understand. Cisco nodded to himself and clicked two Lego pieces together.

Caitlin sighed and stood up. “I hope you can understand we’re not anything like those people soon, Cisco.”

Cisco listened to hear leave but didn’t turn around to watch.

He wondered why they hadn’t told him about the cold gun, Eiling’s favorite weapon of Cisco’s, being back in STAR Labs.

* * *

Cisco spun around in his swivel chair, humming to himself as he drew Barry on the paper in his hand. Barry himself was busy running laps around Central City, apparently to clear his head, which Caitlin said that he could’ve done perfectly easily on the treadmill at STAR Labs. But Barry liked running around outside more. The fresh air felt better.

Cisco could hardly blame him. Being outside was  _ wonderful  _ even if Joe didn’t like it when he was out there for too long now that it was getting colder and was probably going to snow soon. It was a different kind of anger than the anger Eiling used to have-less like actual anger that would end in pain for Cisco and more like genuine worry over Cisco’s safety. It still felt like anger, but… Not dangerous. Better. Safer.

Maybe it wasn’t really anger, even if it felt like it sometimes. All loud emotions felt like anger to Cisco. But Joe wasn’t like Eiling. He didn’t yell or start hitting Cisco when Cisco did something wrong. He just explained it. Explained things like ‘don’t go outside without a coat on’ and ‘don’t leave Legos on the floor where people can step on them’ and things like that. Things that Eiling wouldn’t have bothered to explain. He would have just had Cisco beaten and been done with it.

Not that Eiling  _ ever _ would have allowed Cisco to do things like go outside without supervision or make things out of Legos or play with anything. Not like Joe and Iris let him play with things. They said that he was a kid, and kids were supposed to play with things. Those people had stolen his childhood, but Cisco was more than allowed to take it back.

He didn’t jump as Barry skidded to a halt in the middle of the Cortex-Cisco had heard him coming and felt his vibrations approaching long before he’d actually arrived. Cisco was getting better at predicting where Barry was and where he would be, even if lately he hadn’t been consciously focusing on honing that particular skill.

“Where’s Hartley?” Barry asked, tugging his cowl back and glancing around. “Usually he’s here before all of us, except maybe Wells.”

“Didn’t I tell you he called in sick?” Caitlin frowned and fiddled with the pen in her hands, the same silvery one that Cisco had vibed off of to find her location when she’d been kidnapped. Someone must have cleaned the blood off of it, since it looked good as new. “He’s got the flu or something-he texted me this morning and told me. Probably not going to come in tomorrow, either.”

“I didn’t even think Hartley  _ could  _ get sick,” Barry laughed, taking off his costume in a burst of lightning and putting it back on the mold. Cisco started shading the base of Barry’s boots in his drawing.

“Oh, it doesn’t happen often, only twice since I’ve known him-not counting this, I mean-but when he does get sick it hits him hard. But Jerrie will bring him soup or something, and he’s got Jason for company, so he’ll be fine.” Caitlin waved her hand.

“That’s what he gets for making fun of me yesterday,” Barry said smugly. “Those Royal Flush Gang pretenders  _ were  _ hard to catch no matter what he has to say about it. And the picture was a good idea!”

“Agree to disagree on the last part of that.” Caitlin doodled on a piece of scratch paper with her pen. Cisco fought the urge to snatch it out of her hands and clean it over and over again until he could look at it without seeing it stained with his own blood.

Barry groaned. “Well, at least Dr. Wells agreed with me.”

“Hm.” Caitlin paused and frowned. “Where’s he? No way he and Hartley are both sick at the same time when they both never get sick.”

Barry snapped his fingers. “There was a call to the precinct from his house last night. He said it was a false alarm, though, and that nothing really happened. Just a prank call and a rock thrown through his window. Nothing he couldn’t handle.”

“That doesn’t sound like a false alarm…” Caitlin’s frown got deeper and Cisco shrank back as he added thin little lightning tendrils to his drawing extending out from the funnily-shaped comms on Barry’s head, his boots, and from his wrists. “Did anybody go out to check on it?”

“I don’t think so. He didn’t want them to waste energy on him. At least that’s what Singh said.” Barry tapped his chin. “Though I’m not really sure why Singh told  _ me.  _ I know he knows I come here a lot, but…”

Cisco heard the humming of Wells’ chair before Barry did, so he was prepared when Wells moved into the room and spoke up. “Don’t all of you have better things to do than discuss my whereabouts?”

Barry and Caitlin exchanged guilty glances.

“Sorry Dr. Wells,” Barry mumbled, rubbing the back of his neck and wincing. “Hartley called in sick and we didn’t know if you were sick, too.”

“If you must know,” Wells said, voice sharp in all the wrong ways and making Cisco shiver, “I had a bit of a rough night last night, which meant that I was late to leave home, and then there was traffic on the way here.”

“...Sorry.” Caitlin looked away. Cisco noticed that the bruises at the corner of her mouth were fading and wondered why he felt good about that. It must’ve been because of how nice the strange not-quite-Doctor had been to him. That was why he felt glad that she was no longer in pain, and that if she  _ was  _ still hurting she would stop hurting soon. That must have been it. Just because of her kindness. Not because he actually cared about her. Assets and Doctors did  _ not  _ care about each other. “I didn’t mean to imply… Sorry.”

Cisco frowned to himself. Why did everyone here insist that Wells was not a Supervisor? That he wouldn’t hurt Cisco? Cisco had seen how he acted around everyone else-of course he would hurt Cisco, just like he had obviously hurt Barry and Hartley and Caitlin. (Cisco didn’t think that Wells would dare try to hurt Joe-that would be too far, and he knew that Wells knew that. Just like how hurting Iris would be too far.) That’s what Supervisors did. They didn’t hurt Assets directly, not always, but they hurt their underlings and they ordered people to hurt their Assets. Wells even kept all of his Assets in little cells just like Eiling had, even if his cells were much bigger than Eiling’s had ever been. That was Supervisor behavior.

Why was Cisco the only one who could see that? The only one who could see that Wells was just like Eiling? Just like every other Supervisor out there? Why couldn’t Barry, someone Cisco  _ knew  _ Wells must’ve hurt before, see it as clearly as Cisco could?

For an Asset, for a metahuman, with such great speed, Barry did not seem to be able to pick up on obvious signs very quickly.

Something beeped once and then started screeching, and this time Cisco did jump, squeezing his eyes shut against the flashes of red from the alarms and clapping his hands over his ears to stop the loud angry sound from drilling further into his skull.

Barry rushed to the turn the alarm off. “Shit, Cisco, I’m sorry, let me just-it’s off, you can take your hands away from your ears now. I’m really sorry about that. Caitlin, what-?”

Caitlin was looking intently at something on her computer, eyes narrowed. “There’s somebody in a mask and a cape destroying the Rathaway Industries building downtown. The attack just started, but the police have already been called and are on their way.”

There was a moment of silence as everybody except for Cisco looked at each other.

Barry broke it. “Well,” he swallowed, “maybe it’s for the best that Hartley’s sick today.”

He was gone in a second, vanishing out the door in a flicker of yellow lightning before coming back a few seconds later after realizing that he’d forgotten to put on his funny red suit.  _ Then  _ he left for good, and he was out of Cisco’s vibrational range within forty seconds.

Cisco watched him go and then kept looking at the doorway he’d left out of, something in his chest clenching painfully.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Betrayal does so many different things to people."--Trai Byers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry Christmas to those who celebrate it. There's literally no mention of Christmas in this fic.
> 
> Warnings for vomit, mentions of homophobia, and misgendering of an offscreen character. As always, let me know if you think I missed something.

Barry skidded to a halt outside of the Rathaway Industries building, lightning flickering off the heels of his boots as he crossed his arms and inspected the potential metahuman.

They were dressed in black and green, in a surprisingly well put-together costume for a criminal. Barry didn’t pay much attention to the boots, dark green cloak, and relatively normal green shirt, instead focusing on the strange mask, which was made of a sleek silvery metal with green glass triangles fit in where the eyes would be and a screen around the mouth so that the person behind the mask could both speak and breathe through it.

Oh, and also on the black and green gauntlets that were currently sending a soundwave directly at Barry’s head.

He avoided it easily, letting it crash into a police car instead. Barry winced as he heard the windows of the car shatter.

“Hey!” He shouted, staying a short distance away from the attacker. “Uh-you! Whoever you are!” They turned their head to look at him and Barry shuddered at the eerie eyes of the mask. “This is going to end badly for you! Just stand down now before things get any worse!”

“I don’t have to do anything  _ you _ tell me,” they hissed, voice coming out deep and slightly garbled. Barry assumed they had a voice modulator somewhere inside their mask. He could hear Caitlin’s nervous breathing in his ear for a moment before she shut off her side of the link, probably so he wouldn’t  _ keep  _ hearing it. “And who are you listening to in your ear? I can feel the frequency.”

“So you  _ are  _ a metahuman?” Barry narrowed his eyes behind his cowl and dodged another blast from the gloves. “What do you have against Rathaway Industries?” Another blast. “Let me guess, you’re a former employee? The owner of a rival company? Some, I dunno, bitter ex-lover of Rachel Rathaway?”

They made a noise of disgust behind their mask. “You don’t need to know who I am, Flash. You can just call me the Pied Piper.” Barry didn’t have to see their mouth to know that they were smiling. “People the Rathaways, like Harrison Wells”-Barry jolted-“like Maxwell Lord, like the Staggs, and all the rest-I’m here to make them pay for their sins.”

Their  _ sins?  _ What kind of  _ sins  _ did someone like Wells have? Maybe this guy had a weird religious thing. Might explain the creepy mask. “I may not know the Rathaways, but I’m sure they’re probably good people,” Barry said carefully, before yelping and dodging a blast that came dangerously close to knocking him into a fleeing bystander. “Just like Lord. Stagg-alright, fine, he’s kind of a scumbag even if he disappeared a few months ago, but I  _ know  _ Harrison Wells is a good person.”

Pied Piper laughed, the sound coming out distorted and mocking through their mask. For a moment, it almost seemed familiar to Barry, but he pushed that thought out of his head. “I forgot,” they hissed, “you  _ work  _ with him, don’t you? Attend his beck and call like an obedient little lap dog.”

Barry reeled back. “Hey! I’m not a  _ dog!  _ And-” He glanced around at all the bystanders who had formed a loose ring around him and Pied Piper. At least that meant Piper wouldn’t get away, but it also meant that he couldn’t confront them on how they knew that Barry worked with Wells. “And I don’t work with Wells.”

“I think we both know that’s a lie.” Pied Piper’s strange synthetic voice grew more mocking. “I wonder what the people of this city would think if they knew about all the things Wells had done. All the skeletons in his closet. I’m one of them, you know. A man he thought he’d silenced who’s back for more.”

_ “Barry,”  _ Wells’ voice said in Barry’s ear, and Barry jumped a little.  _ “Don’t listen to him. He’s trying to get inside your head. Do  _ not  _ let him do so.” _

“He’s talking to you right now, isn’t he?” Pied Piper taunted. “Telling you about how I’m a liar. How I’m just trying to get inside his head. He would know, wouldn’t he, considering how much he got inside of mine.”

“You’re going down no matter what,” Barry insists. “You’re not making innocent people suffer.”

“Nobody who I’m going to punish is  _ innocent,  _ Flash,” Pied Piper hummed, spinning on his heel and firing another blast up at the Rathaway Industries building. Barry heard a distant scream and realized with a sickening jolt that there must have been people inside that building-which meant he needed to get them  _ out of there,  _ and fast. “They’re the rich people looking down on all the rest of us and mocking us. The monsters who endanger the lives of the people in this city every day. I’m their comeuppance for everything they’ve done.”

Barry looked back and forth between Pied Piper and the building. “And what the hell has  _ Wells  _ done to hurt this city?”

“Telling you now would be too easy,” Pied Piper dismissed. “I’d rather let him tell you on his own. He can hear every word of this, can’t he? I wonder if he knows everything I know. If he thinks he managed to keep me quiet with a few little threats. It’s time for him-and everyone else like him-to face the music.”

_ “Try to lure him away from Rathaway Industries and away from all the bystanders,”  _ Caitlin suggested.  _ “Minimize the damage. And then get those gloves  _ away  _ from him, alright? He doesn’t seem to be a metahuman, just a good inventor or someone who  _ knows  _ a good inventor. He doesn’t look like he’ll have any way to fight you off or any powers once those gloves are gone.” _

Barry dodged another blast from said gloves. He was much faster than whoever Pied Piper was, that was for sure, but he couldn’t think of a way to get up close to get the gauntlets off without either giving Piper a chance to blast  _ him  _ or blast a bystander. Maybe if he circled around at top speed and attacked him from behind or something like that…

“You want to hurt people like the Rathaways, and like Harrison Wells?” Barry called, zooming to the right and ducking down to avoid another blast. It was strange-Pied Piper was moving slowly, almost leisurely, like he wasn’t concerned with how this fight was going to turn out. That should have worried Barry, but it didn’t. “Why not attack their homes? Don’t you want to punish them for what they’ve done to innocent people, not  _ hurt  _ innocent people even more?”

“I have attacked their homes,” Pied Piper dismissed, and Barry jolted a little. “Last night, I gave Wells a warning. A taste of what’s to come. You know  _ nothing  _ of what he’s put me through. As for the Rathaways… I’ve already tried to make them pay. But they won’t listen to personal attacks. So I decided to harming their central building, this monument to their money and their ego, would get their attention a little better.”

Barry dodged another blast and circled in closer, trying to find a gap in the half-ring of people around them that kept him and Pied Piper close to the Rathaway Industries building. If he could get Piper away from everyone, then he could get the gloves off of him and bring him in without having to worry about Piper turning his focus onto the bystanders instead.

He lunged for Piper, aiming to wrap his arms around his midsection and yank him through the line of people and police cars, and in slow motion he watched Piper lift his hands up to shove him away. Barry’s too fast for that, though, and he smiled a little bit to himself as he managed to grab Piper around the chest just as Piper’s gloved hands came to rest with their palms pressing against Barry’s ribcage.

_ Something  _ ripped through Barry, blood mixed with bile rising up in his throat. He choked on it, ears ringing as he dropped down to the ground and curled up on his side in the fetal position. He can’t breathe, he can’t  _ think,  _ he can’t even move, though he wasn’t sure if there was something actually there keeping him paralyzed to the concrete ground or if it was just the pain thrumming throughout his entire body to match the lightning humming in his veins.

Back at STAR Labs, Caitlin sprang to her feet as the monitors for Barry’s vitals started to go haywire. “What the hell-Barry? Can you hear me? Barry?”

Cisco gripped the new piece of paper he was drawing on at the edges so hard it tears a little after crumpling. He may not be able to exactly read the information presented on the screens in front of Caitlin and Wells, but he knows that the high pitched beeping sounds invading his ears are bad news and he knows that Barry is in trouble. “Is Barry okay?”

“I don’t know,” Caitlin whispered. “Just stay calm, alright?” Her voice cracked. “Barry?”

Barry’s labored breathing abruptly cut off, and for a moment Caitlin’s heart crawled up into her throat. But despite the wild fluctuations, his vital signs all showed that he was  _ alive.  _ So why had-

_ “I’m truly sorry about this, Dr. Snow,”  _ a synthesized voice said over the speakers through Barry’s comms. Caitlin jolted. How did this criminal, this  _ villain,  _ know her name?  _ “I know you’re an innocent person in all of this. Just like the Flash is. So I’m talking to  _ you,  _ Harrison Wells. I know you can hear me, so listen to what I have to say.” _

“If you think that the Flash has nothing to do with this, then leave him out of it,” Wells said, voice as hard as steel. Cisco flinched back, suddenly terrified. Eiling had never spoken that protectively over  _ him,  _ but… Of course Wells was protective over Barry. He was a very valuable Asset with very valuable powers.

_ “We both know that even if he’s just another innocent fly caught up in your web, he’s got far more to do with this than you’re willing to admit,”  _ Pied Piper replied smugly.  _ “He’ll live, but your number is up, Wells. It’s time for you to pay the piper.” _

A loud squeal of static echoed down the link, and Caitlin knew that Pied Piper must’ve crushed the comm. Barry’s vitals stopped their frantic fluctuating, and she breathed a small sigh of relief before looking worriedly at Cisco. He was staying perfectly still, eyes wide and shining with tears as he dropped his drawing to the floor and sprinted away.

Caitlin stood up to follow him, but Wells set a hand on her arm to stop her. “He’ll be alright. We’ll find him later, it’s not like he can leave STAR Labs. Barry’s the one we need to be concerned about right now.”

Caitlin hesitated before nodding. “His comm is destroyed. What if he’s-”

There was a flash of lightning and Barry tumbled head over heels onto the floor of the STAR Labs cortex, vomiting blood onto the floor as he struggled to pull his cowl back from his head. The stabbing pain was gone now that Pied Piper’s gloves couldn’t direct the frequency into his body, but the damage to his internal organs had been done.

Caitlin rushed to his side, helping him pull the cowl back from his face as he looked at her with wide, frantic eyes. “It hurts,” he choked out, blood dripping out of his mouth as he coughed wetly. “It hurts and I can’t  _ breathe-!” _

“You can breathe,” Caitlin soothed, lying Barry down flat on the smooth floor. “You can breathe. You’re breathing right now. Where does it hurt?”

“Everywhere,” Barry gasped out, trying to gesture to his chest. “But especially my ribs. He did something to me.”

“Try to stay still,” Caitlin advised. She looked at Wells, chewing on her lower lip and the inside of her cheek. She wasn’t sure what she could do for Barry outside of just keeping him still and letting his advanced healing rate do the rest. “I’m going to help you out of your suit now, okay? To make you a little bit more comfortable. I think the best we can do after that is to just wait it out.”

“It hurt so bad,” Barry whimpered, fingers scrabbling uselessly at the emblem at the center of his chest. “My ears are still ringing, I can’t-I can’t hear myself  _ think,  _ it hurts so  _ bad-” _

“Your body will heal and take care of it, we just have to wait it out,” Caitlin told him, pulling his gloves off for him as gently as she could despite his involuntary spasms. “Since all the damage is internal, there’s not much we can do but hope it happens fast.”

Barry craned his neck, trying to sit up on his hands only for his arms to buckle. “Where’s-where’s the kid? Ca-Cisco, I mean-fuck-” He vomited again, although this time it was mostly bile and there was less blood. Caitlin winced. With Barry throwing up all these things, it was going to take a lot longer for him to heal. Maybe she could get him to the medbay and set up an IV for him or something… “Is he okay? He was here…”

“Something scared our guest and he ran off,” Wells informed him, adjusting his glasses. Caitlin realized that he looked oddly calm for someone watching their friend throw up blood onto the floor. Someone who had just been  _ threatened  _ by a masked person who had taken out a superhero surprisingly easily. “Most likely the message from your attacker awakened some uncomfortable memories in him and it was too much for him to handle.”

“Message?” Barry slurred out as Caitlin gave up on trying to remove him from the Flash suit. “What message? I barely made it here, and my ears were ringing so much…”

“He… Knew my name, and knew I was listening, and then apologized to me,” Caitlin sighed. “He said that he knew that me and you were innocent in the crimes that Wells had committed, even if we had a bigger role in this than we realized.”

Barry tried uselessly to wipe some of the blood and vomit off his face and only succeeded in getting it all over his hands. “Dr. Wells… Why was he saying all of that stuff about you? Do you have any idea what he could have been talking about?”

There was a long pause as Caitlin and Barry both looked at Wells, who frowned to himself and adjusted his glasses again. He took a deep breath and Caitlin automatically leaned away from him. Just a tiny bit. Almost imperceptibly. She didn’t even notice that she was doing it. But Wells did.

“Perhaps our newest adversary is among the people who blame me for the particle accelerator explosion,” Wells suggested softly. “I am not a popular man in this city, as the two of you know very well. Like Farooq Gibran, Pied Piper may also be someone who lost something and has set out in an attempt to make it right by attacking me.”

The silence stretched out even longer after that. Barry broke it, biting the inside of his cheek nervously.

“But what does that have to do with the Rathaways? And-he mentioned people like Simon Stagg and Maxwell Lord, too. What  _ crimes  _ does he think they’ve committed?” He furrowed his eyebrows together. “I mean… I don’t know a lot about them, and I’m definitely no fan of Stagg after what happened with Danton Black, and besides he disappeared, but… I don’t think any of them have done something really wrong. Including you, Dr. Wells.”

“The Rathaways can rot in hell for all I care,” Caitlin said coldly, which surprised Barry a little, “But I don’t know about Lord. And I  _ know  _ you’re a good person, Dr. Wells. Pied Piper’s probably just a misguided wannabe vigilante who’s taking his anger out on the wrong person.”

Wells took his glasses off and then put them back on again. Barry wondered if there was something wrong with them-Wells had been fidgeting with them a lot lately. “I’m going to go find Cisco and see if he’s calmed down. I’ll be back soon.”

Caitlin and Barry watched him go for a second before Caitlin turned her attention back to making sure Barry was okay. Her hushed assurances faded away as Wells moved out of earshot of them, deep in thought.

The ‘secret’ identity of the Pied Piper was, of course, known in the 25th century. But… Why had he chosen  _ now  _ to reveal himself? And to not really reveal himself at all, since apparently Piper had decided on the addition of a mask. Why? To stop Barry from learning the truth about who he was? He’d never been so shy before. Perhaps Snart’s return along with Rory had spurred him on to reveal himself to the world. The birth of the Rogues, as it were. Or maybe they can’t call it that until they all truly join up and become criminals  _ together. _

Wells hoped he didn’t have to push them on even more. It was hard enough leading Snart to the compound where Eiling kept the cold gun without him realizing what he was doing and who he was. Snart thought he had decided to steal one of the few weapons that could stop a speedster of his own free will. Had found out where it was through his own ingenuity. Wells knew better. Much, much better.

Of course, he would have to keep manipulating from behind the scenes until Snart managed to assemble his  _ entire  _ little troupe of rogues. It was annoying. Snart was a clever man, yes, and his sister was even craftier than he was, but unless he had all the pieces to the puzzle then he couldn’t possibly know what he was supposed to be creating. Wells was the one with the picture on the box.

He found Cisco curled up against the wall in a hallway a ways away from the Cortex. He was hunched up in on himself, shoulders up and hands clasped over his mouth. His eyes were, surprisingly, wide open, and there were tears dripping down from them. His knees were up to his chest, like he was protecting his heart and his lungs from something.

Wells put on the mask of ‘kindly mentor’ and leaned forward a little bit, eyebrows furrowed slightly in concern. “Cisco? Are you alright?”

Cisco flinched back into the wall guiltily and rubbed at his nose, wiping his hand on his pants and hoping Wells didn’t notice the blood. “I-I’m alright, Sir. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to run away.”

“Well, I assume you’ll be happy to know that Barry’s alright,” Wells said gently, the fingers of one hand drumming on the side of his chair. “He’s still in pain, but he’ll heal just fine. He came back while you were gone, if you didn’t hear him running in.”

Cisco ducked down, watching Wells apprehensively. “...Thank you, Sir. I-I was worried about him.”

Wells frowned.

Obviously, Cisco had grown to have some level of trust in Joe, Barry, Iris, and most likely Caitlin and Hartley as well. He wouldn’t be surprised if even his  _ irritatingly  _ likable and excitable ancestor had managed to make Cisco trust him, at least a little bit. Enough to know that Eddie wasn’t going to hurt him. But the traumatized young metahuman didn’t seem to trust Wells yet, despite the fact that he had no reason  _ not  _ to.

Could it have been because of the visit Wells had paid him at the West house as the Reverse Flash-a name that he needed to steer Barry in the direction of soon, since it was getting irritating to hear him repeatedly call him ‘the man in the yellow suit’? But Cisco hadn’t recognized him, had he? No, Wells was reading too much into this. Cisco’s lack of trust in him was most likely due to the fact that some of his mannerisms reminded the boy of Eiling. Nothing more than a PTSD response and trust issues fueled by abuse.

“Well, he’s going to be fine. You can see him if you want, although if you’re squeamish about vomit I wouldn’t recommend it.” Wells smiled wryly, trying to ease Cisco’s nerves. If he could get him to trust him, this would all be so much easier in the long run. “He threw up on the floor. It looks bad, so I can understand if you want to wait out here for a little while longer.”

Cisco swallowed, took a trembling breath, and then shook his head. “No, I-I’m fine. I’ll be alright. Is-is Barry in the Cortex”-he hoped that he had gotten the name right-“right now, Sir?”

“You can just call me Dr. Wells,” Wells reminded him, “and I believe so, although Dr. Snow may have moved him to the medbay to give him better treatment.”

Cisco stood up shakily, leaning heavily against the wall. “I-I’d prefer to keep calling you ‘Sir’, Sir. I think-I think it is better for both of us if I keep calling you ‘Sir’.” He flinched. “Is that alright, Sir?”

Wells sighed. It was going to make Barry and the others all very suspicious, but… “Very well.”

Cisco bowed a tiny bit at the waist, although it might’ve just been him doubling over in pain-Wells watched his face contort slightly. “I-I’m going to see Barry now, Sir. If that’s okay with you.”

“Of course.” Wells watched Cisco run off back to the Cortex, confused and slightly concerned. It wasn’t like he actually cared for the boy, although under different circumstances he suspected that he might have come to do just that very deeply. But he’d incorporated him very quickly into his plans, and it just wouldn’t work out the same if something happened to Cisco now.

Cisco ducked his head down before he peeked back into the Cortex to make sure that actually  _ was  _ where Barry was and that Caitlin hadn’t moved him to the medbay yet, hiding behind his hair. He replayed the message that Pied Piper had given them through Barry’s comm over and over again in his brain. None of the words had been familiar, not really, but the person  _ saying  _ them… 

Vibrations were Cisco’s territory, and after a few seconds of getting used to it no amount of distortion had been able to hide Hartley’s voice.

* * *

Eddie had a problem. Well, technically Iris had a problem, but it was a problem that involved both of them, so it was his problem too.

It wasn’t, surprisingly, a problem related to the fact that they had just moved in together and neither of them actually knew what they were doing. Iris had quickly made friends with all his neighbors, which was more than what Eddie could say he had done in his time of living here, and she seemed to love it, but Eddie was still awkward and fumbling while trying to make Iris feel welcome. Things were working out just fine on that end despite that, however.

It wasn’t related to Joe’s exasperated head shaking whenever he saw Iris and Eddie together, either. Eddie liked Joe a lot, in more ways than one for more reasons than one. He was kind, smart, genuinely very funny when he wanted to be, and a good cop. Eddie had admired his physical appearance from across the precinct before they became partners, too, not that he would  _ ever  _ admit that to Iris.

And it also wasn’t related to Iris’s tendency to put herself out there even if it meant she was going to be put in danger. Eddie actually didn’t mind that, not that it would matter to Iris if he did. It was a part of Iris’s personality, a part of who she was, and even if it scared the shit out of him, he thought it was an admirable trait to be able to do what you wanted without publicly worrying about what the world thought of you (even if he knew Iris  _ did  _ worry about that in private).  

No, the problem was entirely related to a certain bumbling CSI.

Of  _ course  _ Iris felt understandably betrayed by finding out that Barry was the Flash and hadn’t told her. Eddie had too, but when it came down to it he really hardly knew Barry outside of work despite dating his best friend. He and Iris had grown up together, and Eddie knew full well how much it had stung for Iris to find out that there was a massive secret Barry was keeping from her. The fact that he was in love with her was small by comparison. Something forgivable, for lack of a better term. Something that, had he told her about it separately, would’ve been something that  _ altered  _ their relationship, not ended it.

But the fact that he was keeping not one but  _ two  _ secrets from her, and the fact that one of them was a bombshell like Barry being a goddamn fucking  _ superhero…  _ The fact that Joe had known and not told her, had played a large part in Iris not finding out… How could they come back from this? Eddie didn’t really have any advice, even though Iris had asked him for it after coming home and getting drunk. He respected Joe and he really did like Barry, more than he should in a different way than he should, but Iris and her feelings on the matter came first.

Iris’s feelings turned out to be  _ I thought he didn’t love me back.  _ Turned out to be  _ I didn’t think he’d keep a secret this big from me.  _ Turned out to be  _ how could my Dad and Barry  _ do  _ something like this and not tell me?  _ Turned out to be  _ I love you, Eddie, I really do, but I need to be alone right now while I work this out.  _ And Eddie respected that.

What were the odds that he and Barry and Iris were all in love with the same people? Barry would know. He was the star scientist, after all. Eddie was just a cop. And while Iris was smart, it was the kind of smart that let her befriend anybody, let her find out any weakness, let her weasel her way underneath someone’s skin so well that you automatically cared what she thought of you. The kind of smart that let you take charge of a situation and let you both talk someone into jumping off the ledge  _ and  _ stepping back from it. Iris was smart in all of Eddie’s favorite ways. (And Eddie would bet money that it was in all of Barry’s favorite ways, too.)

God, they’re both so fucked when it comes to Barry Allen, aren’t they?

Eddie’s not even sure when it happened for him. Maybe it was during the few times he came to visit Barry at STAR Labs when he was in the coma, bringing food for Iris and saying hello to Caitlin, Wells, and Hartley before awkwardly telling Barry about all the stuff he was missing at the precinct. But wasn’t it a little bit creepy to fall in love with a comatose guy? Had it been even before that, the night of the particle accelerator explosion, when Barry had tried to stop someone from taking Iris’s bag and failed miserably? Or after he’d woken up, maybe?

Iris confessed while drunk that it happened when she was in high school. They’d both had a bad prom night with separate dates so they’d gone outside and sat on the steps of their high school and just talked to each other and ate the sugar cookies that Iris had snuck out of the gym and had fun. It’d been laid back and relaxed and they’d been able to hear the music loudly coming from inside the school and despite how the night had started it had ended in comfortable silence on the drive home. The next morning was when Iris realized she loved Barry differently than she’d thought she did.

Pretty much the only thing Eddie was certain of at this point was that he really did love Iris. So much it made his heart hurt. And he knew Iris loved him. They had each other to cling to while they tried to figure this out, tried to untangle their mess of feelings involving each other and involving Barry. And now that they’d finally actually had a real  _ conversation  _ about it, maybe Iris and Barry could work on patching their relationship up.

And maybe then Eddie would stop having dreams about Barry and Iris together.

* * *

 

Cisco sat cross legged on Joe’s bed and tried to remember before. He wasn’t supposed to be in here, and it made Cisco afraid to disobey orders so blatantly, but it was easier to remember things when you were scared, sometimes. Or at least it was easier to remember Before when you were scared. Everything else was harder. Being scared made your brain stop and run into a wall and then panic like a moth trapped in a glass cup. Cisco didn’t know why.

He was alone in the house. Iris had been coming to visit him less and less, and even though Barry was starting to spend more time there he was busy trying to track down the Pied Piper. Cisco hadn’t told him that he didn’t  _ need  _ to track anybody down, he just had to find Hartley. He hadn’t told him because surely Barry  _ knew,  _ surely this was some sort of game or training exercise that the STAR Labs place did. Barry had said Hartley and the others would never hurt him. Or Cisco. He must’ve been telling the truth.

Cisco’s fingers clenched on Joe’s blankets. No. He wasn’t here to think about Hartley. He was here to do the one thing that he’d been forbidden from doing for almost a decade.

Cisco was going to remember Before, and he was going to do it of his own free will, and he was  _ never  _ going to tell anybody what he was remembering. 

He took a few deep breaths and looked for the faces in his mind. That was the easy part. Names were a little harder, and the hardest part was connecting them so that the right name went with the right face, but-Cisco managed. He hugged himself with one arm and clung to the sheets of Joe’s bed with the other. Okay. Okay. He could do this. He could remember Before. He could do this.

_ (Something’s wrong with Dante. Something’s wrong with Dante. Something’s wrong with Dante. Cisco’s teeth chattered, anxiety making his whole body shake as he sat in the same hard blue plastic and metal chair Armando was in while they waited outside of the principal’s office. Armando had his arms wrapped tightly around Cisco’s waist, keeping him in their shared chair and stopping him from running off. Something under Cisco’s skin was  _ itching  _ and he needed to run and get it out and he needed to save Dante. _

_ Something’s wrong with Dante. Something’s wrong with Dante. Something’s wrong with Dante. Something’s wrong with Dante. Something’s wrong with Dante. Something’s wrong with Dante. _

_ The door to the principal’s office opened and Cisco and Armando sat up straight, eyes big and worried. Their mother pulled Dante through, her eyes blotchy and red from crying and yelling. Cisco had covered his ears when he heard her start shouting at the principal. At least it wasn’t at Dante. Dante didn’t like being yelled at. Cisco didn’t think anybody did, but Dante and Armando especially hated it. _

_ “We’re going to the car,” their mother said coldly, cutting across Armando’s voice as he asked what was going on. Cisco clung to Armando’s hand as they left the school, eyes only on Dante. He was practically drowning in a big, dark brown coat, the same one that their mom had worn into the school and was now wishing she had as she shivered. As Cisco watched, he stumbled listlessly into the car and then leaned on it for a second, blinking the bleariness away from his eyes.  _

_ Armando and Cisco climbed into the back seat of the car, Armando automatically sensing that now wasn’t the time for him to try to get in the front. _

_ Halfway through the ride home, Dante broke down crying, and the car pulled over as their mother pulled him into her lap. “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay. Shh, shh, shh. It’s okay.” _

_ Cisco unbuckled his seat belt and crawled over to be closer to Armando, the twisting uncomfortable feeling in his stomach getting stronger.) _

Cisco cradled his head in his hands and thought hard. Armando and Dante.  _ His  _ people. His brothers. His hands shook.

Dante, who had gotten their math teacher fired for reasons Armando and Cisco weren’t supposed to ask about or know about. Dante, who saved baby birds and learned how to play poker from their next door neighbor and couldn’t drink milk anymore because it made him feel sick and ran in circles in their front yard and taught Cisco how to play two notes on the piano and how to hula hoop and how to whistle and how to swim backward and would wrestle with Armando and Cisco on the dining room floor over the last slice of pizza.

Dante, who Cisco wasn’t even  _ allowed  _ to miss. Dante, who told him to keep his head down whenever possible but if someone was going for your throat, to go for theirs right back.

Armando, who got a big, flashy autism diagnosis at age six that made adults look at him funny and talk down to him. Armando, who wanted to be a famous football player when he grew up and could tell Cisco every single thing about butterflies and moths that there was to know and liked climbing to the very, very tops of trees and pretending that he was a pirate ship captain and trying to carry Cisco around on his back and who loved Cisco and Dante more than anything and told them so everyday and couldn’t eat avocados because of the texture so Cisco ate them for him.

Armando, who had taught Cisco to always stand up for himself and to do what was right, always and without question. Armando, who Cisco had  _ killed. _

He wondered if his family, minus Armando, was still out there. If Eiling had told them that he had their son and he wasn’t giving Cisco back. If they had tried to come for him. If they were even still alive, or if Eiling had forced another Asset to kill all of them. And if they were still alive, it’s not like they would even want Cisco back after everything he had done. After he had  _ killed  _ Armando, their perfect son, and couldn’t even really remember doing it.

Cisco used to fantasize about being saved from Eiling’s facilities, about the police coming for him or one of the superheroes from his comics bursting through the ceiling or about a secret agent smuggling him out to freedom or his parents forcing Eiling to give him back. They had been good daydreams. Good escapes. But at the end of the day, none of it had been real. Bette had saved him. Asset helping Asset. They could only trust each other.

_ (“He’ll be back soon,” Bette whispered, pressing half of an apple into Cisco’s small hand. “Here, you need this more than I do.” She noticed the hesitation on his face. “It’s okay. It’s not drugged. You’re alright. Eat it fast, though, okay? I don’t want you to get in trouble.” _

_ Cisco shoved the whole thing into his mouth and chewed fast, swallowing as soon as he could despite the way it stuck in his throat and threatened to choke him.) _

_ No,  _ Cisco told himself firmly.  _ That’s not true. It’s not like that anymore.  _ Now he could trust people who weren’t Assets, at least enough to know that they wouldn’t punish him for speaking out of turn and eating without permission and sleeping on a  _ bed  _ of all things. At least enough to know that they wouldn’t punish him for telling them his name.

Cisco wondered what Dante and Armando would think of him now. If they were still alive. He wondered how all three of them would have grown up without Eiling.

Downstairs, the front door open, and Cisco automatically bolted out of Joe’s room and into his own bedroom, jumping into the closet for safety and hugging onto his own knees as he whimpered. He wasn’t sure  _ who  _ was home, but the less they knew about him remembering Before and the less they knew about how bad he was being, the better.

* * *

Barry ran in circles around Central City, trying to think.

Cisco. Iris. Eddie. Wells. Pied Piper. Wells. Wells. Wells.

What was he  _ hiding?  _ The Rathaways, who Barry didn’t know much about, had a lot of skeletons in their closet, judging by an extremely rudimentary Google search. Stagg had the whole thing with Danton Black, plus his mysterious disappearance. Maxwell Lord seemed mostly clean, though he and Lex Luthor had been involved in several shady dealings in the past-mostly with each other.

But Piper had been  _ specifically  _ angry at Wells. And at the Rathaways. There were a lot more reasons to hate the Rathaways, considering their notoriously homophobic practices, the disowning of both of their sons (and Barry really  _ was  _ sorry to find that out, for Hartley’s sake) for relatively unknown reasons, their periodic mass layoffs… But outside of the particle accelerator explosion, there wasn’t much that Wells had done.

Maybe Wells was right, and Pied Piper really was just a misguided vigilante who didn’t want Wells to accidentally hurt the city again, with more of an impersonal grudge against the Rathaways. But if that was all he was, how had he managed to figure out that the Flash worked out of STAR Labs? And why hadn’t he gone public with that? The police would probably be willing to pay him quite a bit to get him to tell them who Barry was, if Pied Piper even knew, to say nothing of people like Snart who would probably do just about anything to get their hands on Barry’s identity.

_ “Barry?”  _ Caitlin’s voice said in Barry’s ear, and Barry yelped in surprise as he skidded to a halt, swerving quickly and spinning on his ankle to avoid crashing into a tree.  _ “Does the new comm work?” _

“Yeah, yeah, it works.” Barry looked around to make sure nobody had seen him almost run right into the tree. “What’s up?”

_ “Pied Piper is back,” _ Caitlin sighed.  _ “He just sent us a message. We need you to get back here-”  _ Barry appeared beside her before she could even finish her sentence. “...ASAP.”

“Where is he?” Barry narrowed his eyes, rocking back and forth on his heels. This would be  _ so  _ much easier with Hartley here. Barry trusted Caitlin to keep him alive once he got back and when he got hurt, but Hartley and Wells were usually the ones to keep him going when he was actually out in the field. Caitlin kept him from making rash decisions, but Hartley kept him  _ going.  _ “What was the message?”

Caitlin and Wells exchanged a glance as she pressed play.

_ “This isn’t over,”  _ Pied Piper’s distorted voice said. It sounded almost… Sad. Disappointed.  _ “I gave you a chance to tell them the truth, to tell the whole  _ city  _ the truth about what really happened that night. About what you did. But you didn’t take it. And Barry?”  _ Barry jolted.  _ “I truly am sorry for this. But only to you. And to Dr. Snow. You played no part in Wells’ crime. In fact, both of you have suffered from it. So leave him. He’s a pathetic man hiding behind his money and his fame and using it to do whatever he wants. He  _ hurt  _ people, people all over the city, people like  _ me.  _ Now let him pay for it.” _

There was a long pause, and for a moment Barry thought that the broadcast was over, but Caitlin shook her head and shushed him when he tried to ask when they’d received this.

_ “Do you remember playing chess with your scientists, Wells? How many of them would try to beat you, and how many would fail, and how shocked you were whenever one of them won? I remember. It’s time for one last game of chess, Wells. One more chance for you to own up to your mistakes. It’s time for you to pay up, Harrison. I’m already at the board-the Keystone Cleveland Dam.”  _ Barry pulled his cowl up and got ready to take off. _ “Why don’t you move your scarlet knight to try to stop me, Harrison?” _

“Go,” Caitlin said, as soon as more static hissed over the recording. “We only got this a few minutes ago, he’s probably still there.”

Barry was gone before Wells could warn him not to do anything rash.

He stopped at the dam. There was already a small pile of cars, with Pied Piper perched on the top of it, looking down at something small in his gloved hand. Barry looked around for bystanders and saw the last of them fleeing past him. Pied Piper looked up and tucked whatever it was he was looking at away into his boot.

“Flash,” he greeted. The distortion was still in his voice, but it sounded the same way that it had over the recording. Sad and resigned. “I know Wells can hear me through those comms of yours now that they’ve been repaired, so I have one final message for him-tell the world what you  _ did,  _ Harrison. Try to absolve yourself of your sins.”

“Wells hasn’t done anything wrong,” Barry insisted. “I don’t know who you are or what you think he’s done, but I’m not going to let you hurt him or anybody else in this city.”

Pied Piper reached up and took off his mask.

Barry wasn’t used to seeing Hartley without glasses, but he was still unmistakable.

Barry’s heart started beating a little bit funny, and the noise that came out of his mouth was strangled. No, no, no, this couldn’t have been-this had to have been a trick, or something, it had to have been. Except… Except Barry  _ could  _ believe it. The vendetta against the Rathaways, against Wells… It was all so  _ personal…  _

“Why-” His voice cracked and he shook his head and tried again.  _ “Why,  _ Hartley? I thought you were my  _ friend!” _

“Wells knew the particle accelerator was going to explode.” The words felt like a punch to Barry’s gut. Hartley looked away. “He knew the particle accelerator was going to explode because I warned him it was going to. When I tried to tell him, he told me-” Now it was Hartley’s turn to have his voice crack. “He told me to keep quiet about it. He said that nobody would believe me. I wasn’t-I was a coward. I didn’t try anyway. He  _ hurt  _ people.”

“...Wells knew the accelerator was going to blow?” Barry shook his head. “No, no, he  _ said- _ you’re  _ lying,  _ Hartley. You misunderstood, or-or something. You’re  _ lying.” _

“Make him tell the city the truth,” Hartley pleaded. He sounded more vulnerable than Barry had ever heard him. “He won’t listen to me. None of you will listen to me. Nobody ever does. You need to make him tell the city the  _ truth,  _ Barry. Please.” Hartley looked Barry dead in the eyes. Barry hadn’t even noticed that he’d been slowly advancing and was now only a few feet away from his now maybe former friend. “He  _ killed Ronnie,  _ Barry.”

Barry heard Caitlin’s breath hitch in his ear and bit his lip. “...This is for Ronnie, isn’t it? More than anything else, you’re doing this for Ronnie.”

Hartley laughed a little bitterly, adjusting his cape and standing up on his small podium of wrecked cars. “Ronnie was my friend. He was Caitlin’s  _ everything,  _ and Caitlin was his everything, and I would’ve never gotten between that. But I did love him. He wasn’t the only person who died that night, but you’re right-he’s the one I’m doing all of this for. Maybe that makes me selfish. I like to think that even if Ronnie was still alive, I’d be doing this for the other victims of Wells’ hubris, but I don’t know. Take that how you want, Barry. I know that by now you’ve made up your mind about me.”

“It’s not too late for you to come home,” Barry whispered. “Please. Come home. I-I believe you. I believe you that Wells knew.” He reached up with a shaking hand to turn off his newly-fixed comm as he heard Wells start to tell him not to listen to anything Hartley had to say. “I believe you, Hartley, I really do. We can fix this. You’re my  _ friend.  _ You’re Caitlin’s friend. Ronnie wouldn’t want you to do this.”

“You never met him,” Hartley hissed, flinching back from Barry, and Barry realized that he’d just made a mistake. “He helped me-he helped me get away from Earl, he helped me learn how to open up to people, he helped me learn that not every person was going to turn on me and betray me. He loved my sister, and she loved him, because  _ everybody  _ loved him. But  _ you  _ don’t know him. You never met him.”

“Hartley-” Barry started, holding his hands out, but Hartley shook his head.

“You don’t know how much he meant to me. And how much Wells meant to me, once. I would have done anything to get his approval. He  _ hurt me,  _ and he  _ killed Ronnie,  _ Ronnie and other  _ innocent people!  _ Children!” Hartley clenched his fists. “He’s worked with people like Eiling. The man who tortured and  _ killed  _ Sergeant Sans Souci. The reason the man I love can’t go to sleep at night without making sure that the doors and windows are triply locked. He doesn’t have morals. Maybe he did once. He doesn’t anymore.”

“Hartley, think about what you’re saying,” Barry begged. “Wells can’t hear you right now, I turned off the comm. It’s just you and me. Okay? It’s just you and me.”

“As long as Wells has his claws in you, it never will be.” Hartley looked at Barry sadly. “Which is why I’m sorry about this.”

“Sorry about-” Barry’s legs went out from under him as the same pain from before ripped through him. Only it was different this time, coming from somewhere else. Making his head the center of the pain.

“You won’t die, Barry. I promise. I won’t kill you. I installed those little generators into my backup speakers months ago. When Caitlin-with Cisco’s help, I imagine-installed them back in as replacements for the ones I broke this morning, she put them in your suit. I know it hurts, but you’ll be fine by this time tomorrow.” Hartley jumped down from his stack of cars. “I’ll see you around, Barry. Tell Cisco that Jerrie has his rat and is going to take good care of her for him.”

“Hart-” Barry groaned, trying to push himself up on his hands, “Hart-please, don’t-”

“The frequency will shut off soon.” Hartley’s voice sounded farther away. “Don’t worry. I meant it when I said you would be fine tomorrow. There’s not going to be any permanent damage.” Barry threw up and Hartley winced. “Really, there won’t be.”

“Don’t do this,” Barry choked out, but it was too late, and Hartley was already gone.

* * *

Hartley had thought out his exit from Central City very, very thoroughly. He wasn’t bringing anything with him except for what he could fit in a backpack. Jerrie was taking care of all his rats, and she and Jason were the only two people who knew where he was going. Opal City wasn’t  _ that  _ far away, but Barry probably wouldn’t think to look for him there. From Opal he might go as far as Gotham or Metropolis. He’d let the only two people who really mattered to him who loved him back know when he got there.

He never even made it onto the bus.

He sat down at the bus stop, hood pulled low over his eyes and head ducked down. He had put on his glasses, he sat differently than he usually would, and the dark blue raincoat he was wearing was one of Jason’s, not his own, so if Barry happened to pass by on his inevitable search through the city that he was going to be conducting now that the frequency was shut off, he wouldn’t recognize him from a cursory glance.

And he was right-Barry, speeding past him so fast he wouldn’t have recognized Hartley anyway despite looking for him, didn’t know it was him. But someone else, someone  _ much  _ more dangerous, recognized him.

Hartley stiffened as a man he recognized sat down beside him and pressed something something cold and metal into the side of Hartley’s neck. “Hello, Mr. Rathaway.”

“What do you  _ want?”  _ Hartley demanded, moving away from the gun as his heart crawled up in his throat.

Eiling smiled thinly at him. “I want you to come with me. I think I can offer you a new employment option, considering you’ve just left your old job at STAR Labs.”

“My answer for you now is the same as it was when you tried to hire me after the particle accelerator explosion,” Hartley said coldly.  _ “No.  _ I’ll never work for you. Especially not after I know what you did to Sergeant Sans Souci.”

Eiling sighed and shook his head. “I was afraid you’d say that. Which is why I made sure to get ahold of some… Prepayment.”

“I don’t want your money,” Hartley spat. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see a nondescript white van pulling up closeby, and his fingers clenched on the straps of his backpack. If he could get to his gauntlets and to his flute, then maybe-

“It’s not money.” Eiling leaned closer to Hartley and Hartley fought the urge to punch him in the face and break his nose. “It’s the promise I won’t put a bullet in Jason Rusch’s brain.”

All of the air went out of Hartley’s lungs. No. No. No. “Leave him alone,” he said weakly. “What do you  _ want  _ from me?”

“Your expertise on metahuman matters, of course.” Eiling smirked. “It would be  _ better  _ if we had Dr. Snow, of course. But if you cooperate, maybe we won’t need her.”

“Don’t hurt them.” Hartley looked at Eiling pleadingly. “Please.” The words stuck in his throat. He  _ hated  _ begging, but it seemed like today was a day for it. “Don’t hurt Jason or Caitlin.”

“We won’t. Not if you come with me.” Eiling clapped his hand onto Hartley’s shoulder. “Maybe then we won’t hurt that little brother of yours, either.”

_ “Sister,”  _ Hartley growled, standing up. “She’s my  _ sister,  _ and if you hurt her I swear to god I’ll-”

Eiling slapped him hard across the face and Hartley went silent, trembling with anger and a little bit of fear, even if he’d never admit it. “Get in the van, Rathaway.”

Hartley thought about Jason, Jerrie, and Caitlin, and did as he was told.

* * *

Hartley stayed perfectly still, eyes on the screen in front of him. His hands were cuffed together, as were his ankles, but his ankles were also cuffed to the chair he was sitting in. If he’d been able to think about anything other than the video playing on the tablet Eiling had ‘helpfully’ provided for him, maybe he would have said that it was a lot of security to put on a scientist.

He had no way of knowing if the video if live, but he prayed it was. He had to believe that Jason was still alive. Jason, who was pacing around in a tiny, tiny cell with a cot and a chalkboard in it, hands clenched into fists at his sides. Jason, who Hartley watched sink down onto the floor with a muted sobbing noise and hug his legs to his chest as he stuck his head between his knees.

“I want to see him.” Hartley’s voice sounded far away to his own ears. Different than usual. Like he was about to cry. Which he was  _ not,  _ because he  _ refused  _ to show that kind of weakness in front of Eiling. “I want you to prove this isn’t prerecorded. I want you to show me proof that he’s alive. And then  _ maybe  _ I’ll  _ think  _ about  _ potentially  _ helping you.”

“He’s alive. You’ll only be seeing him if  _ he  _ makes a mistake and  _ you  _ get punished for it. Or the other way around. But make no mistake, Mr. Rathaway- _ he  _ is the valuable one here,  _ not  _ you, unless you’re also keeping FIRESTORM-project related secrets from me. Which means no matter how much you step out of line, he won’t be killed.” Eiling leaned closer. “Your little brother on the other hand…”

“I  _ told  _ you already, she’s my little sister,” Hartley snapped. “I don’t have a brother, and I never did. And I don’t think you even know where Jerrie is!”

“Do you really want to test that theory, Rathaway?” Eiling curled his lip when Hartley flinched, keeping his eyes on the screen and trying not to imagine Jerrie in one of those cells. “I didn’t think so.”

Hartley tried and failed to stop himself from shuddering as his ankles were uncuffed from the chair by a grim-faced woman with long blond hair pulled back from her face into a ponytail. “Where are you taking me?”

“If you’re going to be working with us, that means you need to understand how to do our job.” Hartley couldn’t see Eiling’s face as he was forced by the same woman to march along behind him, but he could practically  _ hear  _ the vicious smile in the General’s voice. It made him feel queasy that someone could do all of these things and take some sort of  _ pleasure  _ in it. “Including how to punish Assets when they step out of line.”

Something lurched sickeningly in Hartley’s gut. He remembered Cisco’s tiny scared face saying that his name was ‘Asset 005’, the brand on the boy’s back, his confusion at why Barry wasn’t being called an Asset. So Eiling  _ had  _ done those things to Cisco, just like he’d tortured Bette before her death. Hartley fought the urge to attack Eiling from behind, reminding himself that Jason and Jerrie would just take the fall for it.

Hartley was no murderer, but he’d never wanted to kill anybody, not even Wells, more than he wanted to painfully and slowly kill Eiling at that moment.

And, God-If Eiling really did have more prisoners with metahuman powers, more ‘Assets’... Would Hartley be able to help them? Give them some sliver of hope that one of them had made it out and was alive and safe and recovering and healthy? Or would that just tell Eiling that Hartley knew where Cisco was? Would that just put that poor kid in even more danger?

Something that tasted rotten crawled up Hartley’s throat and he struggled to swallow it back down and not throw up and show even more weakness in front of Eiling. If Eiling expected him to hurt people for him-expected him to hurt  _ children  _ for him, then he was sorely mistaken. Hartley felt like he was going to be sick.

Torturing another human being would be bad enough, if that was truly what Eiling had planned for him, but if it was a  _ child,  _ someone small and vulnerable and afraid despite their powers like Cisco had been… That was a whole different thing entirely. Hartley would rather die than let Eiling hurt a child through him. Would rather die than let something like that be his fault.

He tried to memorize where they were going, what hallways they were taking and where they were opening doors and turning corners, but his levels of anxiety were too high from Eiling and the woman who was forcing him to walk at a steady pace ahead of her at gunpoint. Hartley prayed that Jason was behind one of the doors, alive and unharmed. That Eiling wasn’t bluffing when he said that he wasn’t going to kill Jason even if Hartley fucked up. That he would hurt him-and Hartley  _ hated  _ that he was now  _ hoping  _ his boyfriend would get hurt because of him, even if it was only because the other option was an execution-but not murder him.

Hartley wasn’t sure that he believed in any sort of a God despite being Jewish, but if there was any time for him to pray then it was now. He closed his eyes and pleaded silently that if there was just  _ one  _ thing Eiling was telling the truth about, it would be that. Whatever he decided to do to Hartley himself, it would be bearable. It had to be bearable. For Jason’s sake. For Jerrie’s sake.

Hartley tripped over his own feet as he was forced to a stop in front of a nondescript door identical to all of the other ones that he had just been marched past. Eiling unlocked it himself, and Hartley forced himself to memorize the passcode he used for the keypad.  _ 111982. _

Eiling grabbed the back of Hartley’s neck and pulled him inside the little room that the door lead to. It was both bigger and smaller than Hartley had been expecting-bigger because he’d assumed it was a broom closet based on the size of the door, but smaller because it was a fairly cramped cell.

Hartley’s eyes followed the cracks in the walls and the floor to a shadowed figure huddled at the back of the cell. It took a second for his eyes to adjust to the poor lighting enough for him to make out an actual shape, and still longer for him to figure out what was human and what was a part of the manacles keeping Eiling’s prisoner attached to the wall. 

His eyes traced the outline of a pair of wrists cuffed together and arms in turn chained above their head. Their hair, which looked dark and tangled in the dim light, had been sloppily cut short, growing out in uneven chunks that went down to their jaw. Dull dark eyes blinked in confused wariness at Hartley until they sparked with some kind of recognition before falling on Eiling and widening in fear.

They crawled back away from him, or at least tried to, since they were already pressed as closely as possible against the wall, making a little whimpering noise as the scrapes on their bare wrist that they’d received from struggling started to bleed from the movement of trying to get away. Their dirty boots scrambled on the floor as they tried to push themselves up into more of a sitting position to take the dead weight off of their arms. 

“Stay  _ away  _ from me!” They hissed, hoarse and disused voice breaking on the last word. “Haven’t you done enough for today?”

“Mr. Rathaway will be working with us from now on,” Eiling said loudly, clapping Hartley on the shoulder hard enough to make him wince and take a half step forward. “He’s here to learn how to  _ properly  _ discipline you.”

They whimpered a little bit before swallowing despite the thick black metal and plastic collar around their neck. Hartley reached up to touch his own throat, wondering if Eiling would put one of those on  _ him  _ soon. He hoped not.

The door opened a little wider, the light from the hallway spilling farther into the cell and illuminating the ‘Asset’s’ face.

Hartley went completely still, eyes going wide behind his glasses. “...Sergeant Sans Souci?”


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Today I choose to feel life, not to deny my humanity but embrace it." --Kevyn Aucoin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally.
> 
> Warnings for vomit, mentions of suicide, implied/referenced self harm, misgendering of an offscreen character, mentions of murder of offscreen characters, and torture. I think that's every warning, please let me know if there's something that you think I should add.

Bette coughed, her whole body shaking with it as she tried to swallow down the blood that came out of her mouth with it. “Who the hell are-” Which one of Eiling’s people had been brave enough to use her  _ real  _ name to her face, and right in front of Eiling at that? Who had risked getting fired or worse? She tried to clear her head by shaking it. “Who the hell are you?”

Despite the blood dripping down from the cut on her forehead into her eyes, Bette could still tell that the new so-called ‘Handler’ was different from the others even disregarding the fact that he had just openly said her name-which, admittedly, it had felt so, so good to hear again. He wasn’t in uniform, his voice was shaky like he was trying to stop himself from crying, and Eiling was looking at him with too much disgust and fury. Even when one of his own people did something he didn’t like, he didn’t look at them like that.

“Sergeant Sans Souci? Bette? It’s me, it’s Hartley, from STAR Labs- _ ah!”  _ Bette watched his hands fly up to his neck as he doubled over in pain and felt a pang of sympathy. He must’ve had a shock collar too. She remembered him now-he’d been mad at her for blowing up ‘his’ suit, at least at first, but he’d overall been pretty nice to her. She didn’t remember him like she remembered Caitlin, and Wells, and Barry, but she remembered him.

“The Asset does not have a name,” Eiling said coldly, and Bette tried and failed to stop herself from shrinking back away from him. He was angry, and that could only mean bad things for her. “The Asset will be referred to as Asset 010  _ only,  _ and any use of the name that it went by when it still believed it was human is punishable.”

“She  _ is  _ a person!” Hartley protested loudly, and Bette swallowed back her scream of frustration at how dense he was. Yes, it felt good to hear her name again, and yes she  _ hated  _ being called ‘ _ Asset 010’ _ or anything else that wasn’t her name, but Hartley was going to get seriously hurt if he didn’t shut up. “You can’t just  _ decide  _ if someone is or isn’t a person!”

Bette watched Eiling electrocute him again. “Next time you talk back to me, I strap one of these collars around your little brother. You’ve already lost Mr. Rusch and yourself two meals. Don’t make it a third.”

“Little sister,” Hartley gritted out through clenched teeth under his breath. “Stop calling her my little brother. You can punish me all you want, just leave her and Jason alone and stop calling her my little brother!”

“There goes that third meal,” Eiling said, mock sympathetic. Hartley swallowed and looked down. Bette could see, even in the dim lighting, that his cheeks were bright red. She remembered how proud he had been when she met him. Confident and cocksure and on top of the world.

“Why are you here, Eiling?” She rasped out, struggling to wipe the blood away from her mouth with the back of her hand despite the chains. Usually she got at least a day before and after each test. It was a big  _ usually,  _ but Eiling didn’t want her to die, so he’d give her a chance to recover. Most of the time.

“I’m here because Mr. Rathaway needs to learn how to punish Assets if he wants to keep Mr. Rusch from getting hurt,” Eiling sneered.

“I’m not going to  _ torture  _ someone for you!” Hartley protested loudly, although his voice cracked part of the way through and it came out a lot less brave than what he was intending. “You said you need Jason alive, so I know you won’t kill him. And you don’t actually have Jerrie, so you can’t hurt her. Even though I hate my parents, they’ve probably got, like-private investigators following her every move, or something like that, so they’ll know if you hurt her. I’m not going to torture someone for you!”

“I may not be able to kill Mr. Rusch until he gives me the secret to Firestorm, but that doesn’t mean that I cannot hurt him.” Eiling shocked Hartley again. Bette closed her eyes. It was disgusting and she hated herself for it, but she was almost relieved that Eiling was hurting Hartley and not her. He wasn’t a defenseless child that she had to protect, not like-like her Cordero had been.

Her poor, poor lamb. He could have been dead by now for all she knew. She had hoped, prayed even, that after she had taken care of Eiling, that her and her Cordero could have had a life together. That one day he would’ve trusted her enough to tell her his name and if he had any family that was still alive. That they could have tried to be  _ normal,  _ tried to recover from what Eiling had done to him.

Even if he didn’t have a family, she could have been his family. And he would have been hers. Nathaniel wouldn’t want to see her again, not after what she had told him the last time she had seen him, and he had always been one to hold a grudge. But maybe he would have been willing to provide a safe place for her Cordero to stay. He despised Eiling almost as much as she did.

Maybe he’d found him, hiding away in their little empty apartment, cold and hungry and alone. Bette had allowed herself to fantasize about that before, about Nathaniel raising Cordero and helping him find his family and gaining his trust and learning his name. When she needed something nice to think about, she thought about that, even if it wasn’t very realistic.

Of course she knew that it was far more likely that her poor friend had starved to death in that apartment, or frozen to death, or died some other way. She knew, at least, that Eiling hadn’t caught him again. He would have bragged to her about how none of his Assets could remain out of his grasp for long. Hell, most of his torture had the end goal of getting her to tell him where she had left ‘Asset 005’, even if that was something Bette would never do.

She knew all of that. But-but wasn’t it better to just pretend, for a little while, that Cordero was alive? Safe, and happy, and well-fed, and with a roof over his head? Wasn’t it better to hope that someone, if not Nathaniel than  _ someone,  _ had found him and taken him in and was keeping him safe?

Sharp pain sparking from the collar around her neck and into the rest of her body shocked her back into reality. Eiling had taken out the oh-so-familiar remote to the shock collar around her neck and had pressed it into Hartley’s hand, forcing him to press the button that activated it.

“I’m sorry,” Hartley gasped out, eyes huge. “I didn’t-I’m sorry-he-”

“Shut up,  _ Handler  _ Rathaway,” Eiling spat, and Bette watched Hartley flinch backaway from him like he’d been stung. “If you and the people you love to remain unharmed, you need to learn how to punish unruly Assets like Asset 010 here.”

“I’m not one of your sick ‘handlers’,” Hartley yelped. “I’m not going to torture anybody for you! You can hurt me as much as you like, you still can’t make me do it! I’ll never work for you!”

“If you want Mr. Rusch to keep all ten of his fingers, you’ll do exactly as I tell you. He doesn’t need all of them to tell me the secret to transmutation,” Eiling hissed. Hartley backed up a few paces, bumping into the chest of one of the soldiers standing behind him. He swallowed and looked at Eiling before looking back at Bette, eyes wide and glimmering.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, and pressed the button on the remote.

* * *

“You  _ knew?”  _ Wells snarled. It seemed to echo throughout the Cortex, and Cisco flinched back, automatically dropping down onto his knees and submitting to the Supervisor. “Hartley could have  _ seriously  _ injured Barry because  _ you  _ decided to neglect to inform us that he had decided to become a  _ costumed vigilante.  _ If he had killed him, and Central City had lost its hero, that blood would have been on  _ your hands.” _

Cisco choked back tears. He knew that Wells was  _ right,  _ but that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt to hear his mistakes thrown back in his face. He’d thought-he’d thought that maybe if he spoke up about realizing that Hartley was Pied Piper-maybe they wouldn’t be so angry with him if he told instead of them finding out on their own. Evidently, he had been wrong, and now he was going to face the consequences for his error. He was going to get what he deserved.

He hunched his shoulders down and sniffled, squeezing his eyes tightly shut and swallowing down a whimper. “I’m sorry, sir. I’ll never withhold information again, sir. I’ll accept any punishment you see fit to give me-”

“That’s  _ enough,”  _ Caitlin snapped, and Cisco jumped. He’d forgotten that she was even in here-he’d been surprised when Barry, Caitlin, and Wells had all actually listened in the first place when he had nervously said that there was something that he needed to tell all of them. “Dr. Wells, I-I can’t  _ believe you.” _

Cisco watched her advance on Wells, eyes wide. Doctors, even weird semi-not-Doctors like Caitlin, didn’t  _ dare  _ challenge Supervisors. Or at least, he had never seen it happen before. Occasionally a Doctor would disagree with Eiling about testing someone like Cisco, someone young and afraid and someone who  _ looked  _ human (even if Cisco was a good little Asset who knew he wasn’t, or at least that he hadn’t been that), but that never lasted for long. They were always gone within a day or two.

Barry set a hand on Cisco’s shoulder, trying to conceal his anger at Wells but unable to hide his flinch when Cisco flinched away from his touch. “Hey, buddy, it’s okay. It’s just me. Why don’t we go to Joe’s house, okay? I can run you over there right now. I don’t know if anybody is home, but you can stay there by yourself for a little while until we get this figured out here, okay?”

“There’s nothing to  _ figure out,”  _ Caitlin growled, and Cisco jumped again. She looked furious, eyes hard and cold and fingers curled tightly into fists. She took a deep breath. “Dr. Wells, I respect you as my mentor and as a friend outside of our work relationship, but you are way out of line and I need you to shut the hell up for two goddamn seconds.”

Dead silence. Cisco felt like he couldn’t breathe. This was-this was completely unprecedented. He had never seen something like this happen before. Evidently, neither had Barry, since his eyes were the size of plates and the hand that wasn’t on Cisco’s shoulder was covering his mouth. Wells looked taken aback, and as Cisco watched he straightened his glasses and leaned forward to make a rebuttal.

Cisco winced a little. Surely she was going to be severely punished for this. He felt bad for Caitlin-which was still a new feeling. No Doctor, even a strange one like Caitlin who had never hurt him, who had  _ thanked him,  _ who used his  _ real  _ name without any hint of malice, had ever managed to garner his sympathy before. But Caitlin had. That was strange. Even stranger than seeing a Doctor challenge a Supervisor.

Instead of allowing Wells to say anything, though, Caitlin held up her hand so that her palm was facing him. “I don’t want to hear it. All I want to hear is an apology from you to Cisco for yelling at him and scaring him when he’s already so traumatized. He’s not one of your employees, he’s a frightened child, and you’re making his recovery worse.  _ You  _ are inhibiting the recovery of my patient. Why do you think he was so afraid to tell us that Hartley was the Pied Piper in the first place?”

There was silence again. Barry swallowed loudly. “She’s-she’s right, Dr. Wells. Cisco’s not-you can’t yell at him like that.” Under his breath and audible only to Cisco, Barry muttered, “Well, you shouldn’t yell at  _ anybody  _ like that, but especially not him.”

“I didn’t mean to make you angry,” Cisco whispered. Maybe if he tried to fix this, Wells wouldn’t hurt Barry and Caitlin. It was strange to want to take a punishment for a Doctor. Not so much to take one for an Asset, since he had done that countless times, but… “Please don’t hurt Caitlin and Barry, sir. They haven’t-they haven’t done anything wrong. Please don’t hurt them.”

“Oh, Cisco,” Caitlin murmured sympathetically. She could tell from his trembling that what Wells had said had really shaken him up. This  _ had _ to have set back his recovery. Yes, she was upset that Cisco hadn’t shared the information about Hartley with them, since it had led to Barry getting hurt, but they all knew that if Hartley had really wanted to permanently injure or kill Barry, then he would have done so. His goal had been something else. “He’s not going to hurt us. Or hurt you. It’s alright.”

Barry knelt down behind him and gently touched Cisco’s rib cage from behind. He kept his pleased feeling at the fact that his finger touched a little tiny bit more than just skin and bone to himself. “Hey, Cisco, can I pick you up so I can run you back to Joe’s place? I don’t think this is the best place for you to be right now.”

“Okay,” Cisco whispered. Barry was trustworthy, mostly. Barry was good and kind and a hero and more importantly than all of that, he was a  _ metahuman.  _ Which meant that Cisco could trust him to keep him safe. “Okay. I wanna-I wanna go back to Joe’s.”

What he  _ really  _ wanted was to hide in his closet and cry and play with Hartley’s rats. But he couldn’t do any of those things, even if he wanted to, and even if Caitlin had messaged someone named Jerrie who said that she had all of Hartley’s rats and was taking care of them, which was a great weight off of Cisco’s chest, since he’d grown extremely fond of them. He had to go back to Joe’s house and stand and wait for his punishment for not telling them about Hartley being Pied Piper.

_ This  _ was finally something punishment-worthy. That was something that Cisco understood very clearly. None of the other things that he had done were big enough for him to get punished for, not even the things that would’ve gotten him beaten or worse when he had been at Eiling’s facility. This was finally something bad enough that would get him hurt.

He wondered, as Barry murmured “I’m going to pick you up now, okay?” and scooped him up in his arms, who would be the one to punish him for this particular crime. Not Caitlin, Doctors didn’t usually punish, they just did experiments. Hartley probably would’ve been the one to do it if he hadn’t been the cause of Cisco’s punishment being necessary in the first place. Joe had a gun but he probably wouldn’t be the one to hurt him. Maybe Eddie.

Whoever it was, Cisco hoped that their methods of punishment would be the one thing that was similar to Eiling. He didn’t know if he would be able to handle any  _ new  _ method of punishment. Eiling had been creative, but at least it was all just variations on old punishments.

New things were scary. If this place was new in every other aspect, including treating Cisco and their other Assets like they were people and insisting that they  _ were  _ people regardless of what Eiling had told them, then wouldn’t their punishments be new and different too? Cisco repeated that once again in his mind.

* * *

 

_ Think about where you come from. _

Jason felt like he was on fire. It was too hot in this tiny cell, and he felt like he couldn’t breathe, although he couldn’t tell if that was from heat or anxiety. That-that man, the same one that had confiscated all of Stein’s research, had come to visit him as soon as he’d been dragged there, the thing that Jason had been dreading for months finally coming to pass.

Nobody was looking for him, since Eiling had been  _ very  _ clear about them having Hartley under their control as well-Jason’s work kept him too busy to contact his dad, and Tonya was off hiking in some remote forest halfway across the world, which meant that the two people who cared about him the most outside of Hartley would have no idea that he was even missing.

He backed away from the huge chalkboard that Eiling’s men had left for him, wiping his sweaty palms on his pants. The FIRESTORM project had been his baby just as much as it had been Stein’s, and even though he hadn’t put it down in months it felt natural flowing from his fingers once again.

_ Think about where you come from. _

Despite what the military so obviously thought, the FIRESTORM project had never been meant for use as a weapon. Stein, for all of his faults, was-had been-a good man, who believed strongly in giving back to his community. He had wanted to use transmutation to help the world become a better place for everyone, and Jason had wanted the exact same thing. Stein had even kicked Danton off the project because of how he thought they should be using FIRESTORM and the research that went into it.

Jason didn’t  _ want  _ to see the work that Stein might have died to protect perverted into something evil. Into something used as a weapon. But he didn’t have a choice. Jason loved Hartley, he really, really did-they’d never actually said it, considering they’d only been dating for a little while, but Jason had always fallen in love fast. Too fast, according to Tonya, and sometimes his dad, too.

It was at times like these that Jason really, really, really missed Mick. Missed having a best friend who was willing to look out for him even when Jason didn’t want to look out for himself, missed having someone who wanted to help him reach the stars. Not that Hartley and his dad and the ex-members of the FIRESTORM project didn’t want that, but… It had been different with Mick.

Jason bitterly reminded himself that Mick was gone. That Jason had cut him off for a reason. That last he heard Mick was still in Detroit. His dad gave him updates sometimes. He didn’t see Mick often either, since they’d never gotten along and Mick was Jason’s friend, not his dad’s. But it was enough for Jason to know that Mick was doing just fine without him. It was better this way.

He wrote another letter on the board chalkboard, wincing at the small sound the chalk made. He hated this. He hated being trapped god-knows-where. He hated not knowing if Hartley was unharmed and okay. He hated Eiling. Jason hated  _ all  _ of this.

_ Think about where you come from. _

Another letter. And another. And another. A number, this time. If Jason could just… Lose himself in this, in the feeling of exploring the boundaries of the FIRESTORM protocols again and the sound of chalk… If he could do that, maybe Jason could pretend that this was normal.

Just another day in Stein’s lab, working toward the goal of transmutation for the betterment of humanity, without a cruel army general breathing down his neck and holding his boyfriend hostage and threatening to do god knows what to him.

The chalk in Jason’s hand broke and it took the illusion with it.

_ Think about where you come from. _

* * *

Dante didn’t usually get visitors. They kept to themselves, and their best (and pretty much only) friend was six feet under. Which was why while it wasn’t a surprise when the doorbell rang, it  _ was  _ a surprise when Dante heard their mother answer it and call up the stairs a few seconds later, “Dante,  _ mije,  _ it’s for you!”

Dante sat up on their bed and hastily tugged the shirt that they had been wearing earlier back on. “Coming, Mom!”

They scrambled down the stairs, preparing a hurried speech in their head to recite when they would have to face whoever it was at the door, mostly made up of apologies for whatever crime they had accidentally committed. They prayed that it wasn’t their neighbor from across the street and two doors down again, pissed off at having to watch Dante climb through their bedroom window night after night, since that had  _ not  _ been a fun conversation to have with their mom.

But the woman standing at their door wasn’t a neighbor at all.

She had dark brown eyes that looked Dante up and down thoughtfully, curly black hair that went down past her shoulders, a stately large nose and brown skin just a few shades lighter than Dante’s own. Hebrew inscriptions in black ink climbed up her arms and neck and collarbone, visible under her black and white three-piece suit. Her jaw was square and her shoulders were wide and and her neck and fingers glittered with jewelry. So in other words, she was drop dead stunning.

Zatanna Zatara, professional magician and protector of the Earth from magical threats of all kinds, raised one of her thick eyebrows at them. “May I come in?”

“‘Course you can, Zee.” Dante grinned and stood aside. “C’mon in. Do you want a drink? I know you don’t drink alcohol, but there’s some nice soda. You can’t have any of the orange but you can have some of the grape. Or the root beer.”

Zatanna took a deep breath and stepped into the house, nodding a little to Dante’s mother when she passed her. Pilar Ramon inspected her for a second before leaving, satisfied that this strange woman really was her child’s friend and wasn’t going to try to harm them.

“I’m fine, thank you,” she said to Dante, sitting down in one of their living room chairs. Dante gave her a thumbs up and sat down on the couch across from her, still smiling.

“Long time no see, Zee. How’ve you been?” Dante’s smile faded when Zatanna’s eyes darkened and she looked down at the floor.

“My half-sister was murdered a week and a half ago,” she said stiffly, and Dante clasped their hand over their mouth. “Her husband, Gerry, died too. It was a home invasion gone wrong, according to the police. Several items were stolen from their home.”

“I’m so, so sorry,” Dante whispered. Completely genuine. They closed their eyes and shook their head. “I-I know how you feel. I’m sorry. May their memory be a blessing.”

“Thank you,” Zatanna acknowledged stiffly, inclining her head slightly. “I just finished sitting shiva for them. But I didn’t come here to tell you about my tragedy. My sister and her husband had a son, as well as a rare artifact passed down from father to son through generations through my late brother-in-law’s side of the family.” She took a few deep breaths when her voice began to shake in an effort to compose herself. “Both my nephew and the artifact are missing.”

“...You don’t think this was an ordinary home invasion, do you?” Dante watched Zatanna closely. They weren’t the  _ best  _ at reading people, and Zatanna in particular was usually a fairly closed-off person in general, but she was currently vulnerable and wearing her emotions plain on her face.

She pursed her lips. “I don’t want to jump to conclusions about the artifact. It could have seemed old enough to be valuable to thieves. But the police haven’t said anything about attempting to recover it. And they haven’t said one damn word about my nephew. He’s missing. If he’s dead, he deserves a proper burial. If he’s alive, I want to take him in. Keep him safe. I only met him a few times, but he has a natural affinity for the mystic arts. Clearly a  _ homo magi.” _

“So what do you want me to do?” Dante leaned back and folded their arms over their chest. “I’d love to help you, Zee, but I’ve gotten on the wrong side of the law more than once while trying to-while trying to-while trying to find Cisco and Armando, and the last thing I need is more trouble with them. You’ve got connections of your own. You don’t need a twenty-year-old loser to help you.”

“You’re right, I don’t.” Zatanna nodded and mimicked Dante’s pose in her chair. “Mari is searching the Lifeweb-Alec is as well. John has promised to use his connections to try to find him, and you know how Blood gets when something happens to children.” She doesn’t mention her concerns about the weakening of her own magic and theirs. The recent fluctuations in power. That’s not for outside eyes to know, and if Dante is anything, they are an outsider. “I’m here so I can talk to your bottle girl.”

Dante winced a little. “She hasn’t been very talkative lately,” they warned. “Been spending more time away from the house, too. I think you’d have better luck sticking to your friends instead of trying to branch out into mine. No offense. It’s not personal. She’s just been…  _ Off,  _ recently. With everyone. And I don’t think there’s a way  _ I  _ can help.”

Cisco and Armando were Dante’s top priorities. Yes, what had happened to Zatanna’s sister and brother-in-law was awful, and  _ yes,  _ they cared about helping find her missing nephew, especially since judging by Zatanna’s voice she thought it was likely that he didn’t have long to live, but-distractions had gotten them hurt in the past. Distractions kept them from their goal.

Cisco and Armando were what was important, not helping an old friend. But because Dante  _ did  _ owe Zatanna a favor… “I’ll tell her what you said, though. She’s got a soft spot for little kids, y’know, because of what happened to her. Or at least I think she does. Hard to tell. I’ll tell her what you said. Hopefully she’ll decide to help out.”

“That’s all I ask,” Zatanna sighed. She pulled a picture out of her pocket, holding it out to Dante. They looked at it. A little kid of about ten years old with round cheeks and curly dark brown hair wearing red noise-cancelling headphones looked back at them. “His name is Rory Regan-might respond to Rory Reganiewicz, too. He doesn’t talk much, but he’s a good kid.”

Dante nodded and closed their hand around the photo. “I’ll give it to Greta. I swear.”

Zatanna stood and nodded to them as she headed toward the door. “I’ll keep you both updated, I promise.” 

Dante watched her leave. They had actually met Zatanna on a trip while they were still in high school-Zatanna and her father were travelling the country at the time and their paths had happened to cross in DC, and they’d met during an unfortunate incident involving an extremely short and angry man, a building on fire, and a very lost Dante.

They’d seen each other since then, since Zatanna travelled often, but she had only recently moved to Central City for good, saying something about a weird energy there. Apparently a friend of hers had helped her and her girlfriend Mari move into an apartment. Some doctor that Dante couldn’t remember the name of. All he really remembered was that Zatanna had said that she’d paid her in free tickets to a magic show instead of in money.

“Who was that?” Their mother called from the kitchen. She’d been listening to almost the whole conversation from in there, out of sight but not out of earshot. Dante jumped a little.

“Just a friend of mine.” Technically it was true. “I’ll be upstairs if you need me.”

The less their mom knew about their activities, the better. It was easier on them both that way.

* * *

“You’re  _ sick,”  _ Hartley spat, trying to stand up as he was dragged along by two of Eiling’s goons like he hardly weighed anything. “And if you think I’ll torture someone for you, torture  _ anyone  _ for you, then you’re insane. Hurt me all you want, I won’t do your dirty work for you.”

They ignored his angry shouting as they secured him to a chair, cuffing his hands down to a steel table just like they had been before. Maybe it was the same one. This facility was like a maze, and Hartley had no idea if he was even in the same part of it as he had been before, much less in the same room.

“Has Asset 014 been processed yet?” Eiling asked. He sounded almost bored, like he could think of a hundred things he would rather be doing than watching Hartley get ‘disciplined’ for refusing to punish an ‘Asset’ to the extent that Eiling wanted him to despite the threat to Jason’s safety. For some reason, that infuriated Hartley, and he opened his mouth to start yelling again, cheeks burning bright red.

One of the guards’ fists slammed into the back of his head and cracked his nose against the table, filling it and Hartley’s mouth with blood. He groaned, ears ringing from the impact and from the pain, the taste of blood making his throat ache, as the other guard looked at Eiling and dutifully answered.

“Yes, and it’s former possessions were all confiscated and sent to the lab for testing, along with blood, saliva, and hair samples, although we were unable to separate the artifact from the Asset’s skin. The rags seem to have bonded to it,” he recited. Hartley could just barely make out that his nametag said  _ Carlson.  _ “However, there was a… Slight issue with the placement of the cells, since it was scheduled to occupy Cell 112, which is already occupied by Asset 011 and Asset 013, and the one next to it had Asset 012, so it’s currently sharing Cell 112 with Asset 012.”

“How many so-called  _ ‘Assets’  _ do you even  _ have?”  _ Hartley demanded. It didn’t come out as strong as he intended, since he was choking on the blood dripping out of his mouth and nose as he said it, but he managed not to break into body-wracking bloody coughs before he finished. The same couldn’t be said for the seconds after. ‘Carlson’ wrinkled his nose as blood splatter got on his clothes.

“That’s not something you need to concern yourself with, Handler Rathaway,” Eiling dismissed. “You’ll be almost exclusively working with Asset 013. Other Assets are not your priority, and they won’t be until you’re assigned to work with them.”

“I’m not  _ working  _ for you or with them,” Hartley growled. “You’re turning me into a torturer. A monster. No way in  _ hell  _ is any of this legal. I don’t care  _ what  _ kind of connections you’ve got, nobody can do this and get away with it.”

“I think I can, Handler Rathaway.” Eiling leaned toward him, eyes narrowed, and Hartley couldn’t help but to lean back away from him. He tried not to let his fear show on his bloody face, but obviously failed to do so. “Nobody is going to stop me. I’m helping my country. Just like you are.”

“This isn’t helping  _ anyone!”  _ Hartley hissed. “You’re just being sadistic for the sake of it! What are you even trying to  _ accomplish,  _ anyway? How does torturing me-torturing Bette and Jason and C-and your other  _ ‘Assets’  _ helping  _ anybody?  _ All I see is a sicko who likes to hurt people and gets off on causing pain. Who the hell is that supposed to help?”

“Mr. Rusch is serving his country by providing me with information on the FIRESTORM protocols and by keeping  _ you  _ in line. Asset 010 has been defiant lately, but it has been extremely instrumental in designing new types of explosives. And  _ you,  _ Handler Rathaway, are helping me by keeping them both in line. That is all you need to know.” Eiling slapped Hartley across the face, hard enough to make his skin-especially on his nose-burn.

Hartley swallowed blood. “You really are insane, aren’t you?”

“I’m just trying to protect my country.” Eiling walked to the doorway of the room and looked disdainfully over his shoulder at the mess Hartley’s blood had made. Later, he’d make Hartley clean it up. “It’s time you put things like morals aside and learned how to do the same.”

* * *

Cisco had cleaned his bedroom  _ (bedroom,  _ not a cell, that was something they were all very insistent about so he had to remember it) top to bottom five times over when he heard the front door open.

Barry had left him at Joe’s house and gone back to STAR Labs alone. Since he’d been left behind in his room, Cisco had decided that something that would make Joe and the others happy would be to clean it. Of course, since it was already mostly spotless due to Cisco’s fear of being punished for making a mess, that hadn’t taken much time at all, so he’d combed through the room several more times before finally being satisfied.

He’d been sitting on his bed waiting to hear Joe get home, hugging his knees to his chest, and the minute he heard someone come in he jumped off his bed and ran to kneel down in front of the door. Cisco’s heart was pounding a mile a minute and he clenched his fingers on his knees, shaking a little bit. There was a little bit of breathless excitement mixed in with his fear, and he wasn’t sure why.

Maybe it was because he hadn’t seen Joe be really,  _ really  _ angry before. Like-like-what had been the phrase that some of the Handlers had liked to use? Itching-angry? To talk about how it made their hands itch because they wanted to beat their Assets so badly, but couldn’t without permission from someone higher up. 

Even if the thought of Joe being that angry was  _ terrifying,  _ it still wasn’t something that Cisco had ever seen. It would be… Interesting, to see it. Barry never properly answered when asked about what made the Handlers and Joe and Supervisor Wells angry, he just insisted that they wouldn’t punish either of them if they were angry, which wasn’t  _ really  _ an answer. It was just a false promise that didn’t help Cisco avoid making them angry and just made him more nervous about messing up.

“Cisco? Barry called me and told me that something happened at STAR Labs,” Joe’s voice called up the stairs, getting closer by the second along with his footsteps. Cisco tensed his shoulders and swallowed down his fear, shaking a little as he tried to straighten his back. Handlers didn’t like bad posture, at least on some days. Different handlers liked different things. Sometimes they wanted you to cower and sometimes they wanted you to stand up straight and look at them and not be cowardly.

The door opened and Cisco bowed his head even lower, ignoring the discomfort. He couldn’t afford to feel it. He closed his eyes and didn’t open them even as Joe knelt down in front of him and gently rested a hand on his shoulder, although he did shy away from his touch and bite the inside of his cheek to stop himself from whimpering. Joe seemed to recognize the distress he was causing him and pulled his hand back.

“You’re not in trouble, son,” Joe promised. “It’s okay. Remember how I’ve been promising that I’m not going to hurt you? That hasn’t changed. Why don’t you tell me what happened at STAR Labs? Barry just said that Dr. Wells scared you.” There was anger in his voice as he said that and Cisco leaned back oh so slightly. “I’m sorry that happened and I don’t want you to feel any worse, but I want to hear the story from you. Can you tell me what happened?”

Cisco hugged his shoulders. Calm, calm, calm. Joe was saying he wasn’t in trouble. And unlike with Eiling, when  _ Joe  _ said something, it wasn’t usually a lie. But why wasn’t he in trouble? He’d done a bad thing. A very bad thing. A thing so bad that the Supervisor had  _ yelled at him.  _ When he thought about that, his throat tightened. No. No. Joe had to be lying, because Supervisor Wells had  _ yelled at him  _ and  _ told him  _ that he had done something bad.

“I-I-” Cisco’s vision blurred with tears. Why did he feel so weird? Before talking to Joe had been different. Scary, yes, extremely scary, but Cisco had been  _ sure,  _ at least for a time, that nothing was going to happen. That even though he had made Joe angry, he wouldn’t be punished for it, because he hadn’t been punished the other times. But now the certainty was gone. It was like stepping into thin air when you were expecting there to be another stair left to go.

Why? He’d been yelled at before. Lots of times. By Eiling, by Doctors, by Handlers, by people from Before that he wasn’t supposed to think about. Getting yelled at now shouldn’t have been any different. So why did he feel so shaky and wrong and weird?

_ (“Dante?” Cisco whispered, peeking into the bathroom and looking over to where his older brother was sitting in the bathtub. “I need to brush my teeth and ‘Mando’s using Mom’s bathroom. Can I brush them in here?” _

_ Dante didn’t respond and Cisco crept inside, closing the door quietly behind him. Dante’s wet knees were brought up to his chest, with his nose shoved down in between them. Angry red marks cut through Dante’s upper arms, like he’d been scratching at them not quite hard enough to break the skin but hard enough to hurt. Even though Cisco knew that the water must’ve been warm-Dante despised cold baths and showers-he was still shivering. _

_ “Okay,” Cisco said a little awkwardly, getting out his toothbrush and sparkly pink toothpaste. He’d need to get more soon, this tube was running out. “I’ll-I’ll-” _

_ “Cisco?” Dante said softly, and Cisco jumped a little. His voice sounded hoarse, like he’d been crying. Cisco remembered the sobbing sounds he could hear all the way from his room.  “Do you ever feel dirty?” _

_ “...Dirty?” Cisco blinked. “‘Course I do. All the time. ‘Cause me and you and ‘Mando play in the mud and stuff and that one time we went to the beach and got all sandy and-” _

_ “Not like that. Like a different kind of dirty. Like-like-” Dante sniffled and hugged his knees tighter, the water sloshing around in the tub when he did so. “Like  _ dirty- _ dirty, like-like you-you can’t-” _

_ “...Uh uh.” Cisco shook his head. “I dunno. I don’t think so.” _

_ “Okay.” Dante took a deep breath and screamed, loud and wordless and painful, digging his fingernails into his bare calves. Cisco jumped again, this time dropping his toothbrush into the sink and backing away toward the bathroom door. “It’s not  _ fair!”  _ Dante yelled, voice muffled by his own skin. “It’s not fair, it’s not fair, it’s not fair, it’s not fair…”) _

“Supervisor Wells yelled at me,” Cisco forced out. He could feel how hard he was shaking, coupled with the hot wetness of tears on his cheeks. “I know I was bad but he  _ yelled at me  _ and-”

Joe pulled him into a hug, pressing Cisco’s face into his shoulder and letting Cisco sniffle into his shirt. “Barry said he scared you, but…” He shook his head, his ear pressing into Cisco’s own on accident, touching against the smooth metal and plastic of the dampener inside it. “I didn’t know he yelled at you, I’m sorry.”

He tried not to show how angry he was on his face, even if Cisco couldn’t see it. If Cisco had been almost anyone except for a traumatized child (and unfortunately, Joe’s digging had yielded nothing so far about Cisco’s actual age, or about his family-it was like someone had gone through and carefully erased any leads that Joe could have found), he wouldn’t have been so upset. Wells should have known better. He was a grown man, and no amount of enigmatic personality could excuse yelling at someone who you  _ knew  _ was in a fragile state of recovery.

Joe didn’t like the idea of anyone yelling at Barry, or Caitlin, or Hartley-Christ,  _ Hartley- _ but at least they were grown adults who were capable of handling Wells’ moods. Cisco wasn’t. One day he might be able to, with the right help and the right amount of recovery, but that day was not today. Joe rubbed Cisco’s back a little. “I’m sorry, son. He shouldn’t have yelled at you. Do you know  _ why _ he was yelling at you?”

“He yelled at me because I was bad,” Cisco said, a little evasively, into Joe’s arm. He was enjoying this hug-enjoying  _ touch  _ from someone who  _ wasn’t  _ another Asset! How strange!-and he didn’t really want it to stop like he knew it would if Joe found out what he had actually done. The specific way that he had been bad. “And he wanted me to know that I had been bad.”

“How were you bad, Cisco?” Joe coaxed. It had to have been something actually bad for Wells to have reacted like that, but he was sure that it had to have been a mistake on Cisco’s part.

“I-I didn’t tell Supervisor Wells or Barry or you or Doc-or Miss Caitlin about Hartley being the-” He tried to remember the name the not-Handler had used. “Being the Pied Piper. Sir.”

He threw in the ‘sir’ at the end a little hopefully. He didn’t want to get yelled at again and be forced to feel even  _ weirder,  _ even shakier and even more off balance. He squeezed his hands together against Joe’s chest. Self soothing gesture.

“...You knew?” Joe’s arms tightened a little, but he hadn’t start to hit yet, so Cisco took a few deep breaths to draw out the moment before continuing. He never would have done that with Eiling-but this never would have happened with Eiling. This… Enjoying touch. Even with Bette, he couldn’t be touched for too long without feeling uncomfortable. He liked it when she hugged him, but when it got to be too long his chest would start to feel tight. With Joe, though, it was… Comforting. He didn’t want that to end.

“I knew, Sir,” Cisco admitted. “I knew and I-I didn’t tell anybody.”

“Why didn’t you tell someone?” Joe asked, making sure to keep his voice level. He could feel Cisco trembling in his arms. This was the longest time the boy had let him touch him without it being because he was petrified with fear. He didn’t want to make him feel unsafe, especially since it was clear that Cisco was already afraid of what Joe’s reaction would be.

“I didn’t know if I was right and I didn’t know he would hurt B-Barry or what was going on because-because I don’t hear-” Cisco paused for a moment and struggled to find the right words. “I don’t hear… Crackling? Twisting? When you-when you talk into something and then it comes out of it sounding  _ different?  _ I don’t hear the different, I just hear the voice, once I get used to hearing it.”

“You could hear through whatever he was using to distort his voice,” Joe said softly, “but you didn’t know what he was doing and you didn’t know if it was really Hartley and you didn’t know that he would hurt Barry? And that’s why you didn’t tell anyone? Is that right?”

Cisco nodded into Joe’s shirt. “I’m sorry.”

“Well, I’m not happy you didn’t tell us, and if something like this happens again then I want you to tell me or Dr. Wells or Barry or  _ someone,  _ okay? But you’re not going to be punished for not telling us. Barry was fine, Hartley didn’t do any permanent damage, and I think the scare Wells gave you is a lot worse than you deserved for not telling us,” Joe said slowly. “I know you’d never let Barry get hurt on purpose, okay? We all know that.”

“I’m not in trouble?” Cisco tried extremely unsuccessfully to keep the hope out of his voice. Hope would make it so he  _ was  _ in trouble. Hope would ruin things like it always did.

“That’s right, you’re not in trouble,” Joe assured him. “I just want you to promise that if something like this happens again, you’ll tell someone.”

Cisco swallowed and nodded as he squeezed Joe tighter. “I promise.”

* * *

 

Hartley idly wondered if the best way to get out of torturing people under Eiling’s orders would turn out to be committing suicide. He wondered what Eiling would do to Jason if he did that. He wouldn’t kill him-hadn’t he said that he needed Jason’s brain? Needed what Jason knew about the FIRESTORM project? Hartley was just something to keep Jason in line. Something to use the skills of as a side benefit. Something for Eiling and his people to play with.

It wasn’t like he’d actually do it. They’d stop him before he could. And if Hartley died, then who would get Jason out? Nobody knew where they were. Jerrie would realize that something was wrong, of course, that they were missing, but what could  _ she  _ do about it? Hartley wasn’t going to escape like that. He  _ couldn’t. _

They’d given him files to look through. On the Assets that he would be working with. Three of them-he knew that couldn’t have been all the ones Eiling had, but maybe it was just all the ones he had at this facility…? Hartley didn’t want to think about how deep this could’ve gone. It made him think of the Pipeline cells at STAR Labs, about Barry sobbing out that he’d been too late to help Bette, that Eiling had  _ killed her,  _ about nightmarish images of rows and rows of cages stuffed with screaming metahumans.

‘Asset 010’ from the first file-that was Bette. Of course the file didn’t  _ say  _ that, none of the metahumans had their real names listed, but it was her. There were pictures enclosed in the file, of her bloody hands and her internal organs pulsing with purple light and what looked like mugshots.  _ ‘Physical identification reference’  _ was what they were labelled as. There were other pictures, but Hartley didn’t want to look at them.

Strange how he could stomach seeing the hands of his maybe-friend bloody and raw and cut open, but not the images of the Sergeant huddled against the wall of her cell, naked and terrified. Vulnerable.

‘Asset 011’ from the second file was someone Hartley didn’t know. They were a man, or at least that’s how their sex was listed in the file, was twenty-eight, and… That was it. That was all Hartley could tell about them based off the file and the images, which he could hardly stand to look at for longer than a few seconds. It was easier than with Bette, because he didn’t actually  _ know  _ this person, but it was still vile. Most of the pictures were of skin patches, all labelled with things like ‘acid test stage three.’

‘Asset 013’ was a  _ kid.  _ Sixteen years old according to the file, with spiky black hair and skin that was unhealthily pale and wide eyes. Hartley doubted they were naturally purple, so she must’ve been using a good pair of color contacts, since they looked real. Her file was the slimmest of the three, with Bette’s being the thickest, and it was full of things like notes correcting that she was actually a metahuman with things saying she was just using magic, and then  _ those  _ were corrected with arguments to the contrary.

Eiling had said that they would be  _ his  _ Assets. Not solely, since Hartley knew that Eiling was well aware that if given any less supervision he would treat the poor prisoners with humanity and not cold cruelty, but… That Hartley would be working with them. Punishing them and training them- _ ”Not that the Sergeant needs much training,”  _ Eiling had sneered before he left.

He could feel the guard standing just inside the doorway to the cell- _ his  _ cell? Was this where he would be permanently staying? There wasn’t a bed and he couldn’t see a bathroom anywhere, although there was a drain in the floor-watching him as he looked through the files over and over again. It had gotten Jason (don’t think about Jason, don’t think about how he must be feeling, don’t think about how he must be in pain and afraid and alone) punished before to use Bette’s real name. But… He was the only one here who could address her like she was a person. Would Jason understand that? If he was punished again?

Would he realize that Hartley was trying to help someone else? Or would he think that Hartley didn’t care about him? He shuddered. It felt like having to choose between Jason and Bette-Jason’s safety over Bette’s humanity. He couldn’t make that choice.

(Or maybe he just didn’t want to, because he knew that for him it wasn’t really a choice at all. Maybe he just didn't want to confront that part of himself just yet. The part that told him that Jason took priority.  _ Always.) _

* * *

“Are you mad at me?” Cisco asked the bathroom mirror. It was dinnertime, which meant that he had to wash his hands, a rule from Before that had returned when Cisco moved to Joe’s house. His reflection didn’t answer, staring back at him with bright brown eyes. Cisco tilted his head to one side and repeated, “Are you mad at me?”

It still didn’t respond. 

Cisco made a soft little noise. “Bette, are you mad at me?”

Cisco’s reflection looked nothing like Bette. Bette’s hair was long and orangey brown and full of tangles. Cisco’s had stopped tangling permanently once he started using his new hairbrush and comb, and it was black instead of red, but at least it was long, even though it wasn’t as long as hers had been last time he had seen her. His jaw was starting to get fuzzy again, and he rubbed at the little hairs curiously. Eiling always shaved his face when he shaved his head. They hadn’t done that here. Not yet, anyway.

He didn’t look anything like Bette. But he could pretend, a little. He could fake it. Pretending to have people in front of you who weren’t actually there wasn’t something he was good at, but it was something he had done before. He could do this now even if it made him feel like he was going to throw up.

He imagined what Bette would say. She would be nice to him. She was always nice to him. Would call him Cordero and hug him close when they could hear the angry Handlers storming down the hallway toward them. It had been scary,  _ so  _ scary, but at least she had been there to help.

Cisco’s shoulders shook. Maybe she was mad at him, from beyond the grave, because he hadn’t saved her. Cisco wasn’t sure if he believed in a heaven or a hell. But he hoped there was a heaven for Bette. Somewhere safe for her after all the pain.

Maybe she would meet Armando there. 

Maybe she would tell him about Cisco, about the boy she’d freed, and he would tell _her_ childhood stories that only Armando and Cisco and sometimes Dante knew, like that time they went out playing in the woods and there was that big loud thunder noise out of a clear sky and it made Cisco and Armando get sick for days, vomiting and sweating and shaking. They’d felt like their nerves were on fire, like they were batteries, like-

Cisco slipped on the stool in front of the sink and fell into a vibe as his ears popped.

_ The first thing he saw were the hands. Broken nails and bloody, scraped fingers, cuffs clamped tightly around the raw skin around the wrists. Cisco looked at them instead of looking at the face and body that they belonged to. He couldn’t. He  _ couldn’t.

_ “Bette?” He said instead of looking at her face. He looked around for himself instead. He’d vibed his own past before, usually on accident. It was weird. But-but he didn’t-he didn’t see himself, and sometimes when he vibed he just took the place of the person he’d been when it originally happened, except he couldn’t remember this  _ particular  _ cell, or Bette being chained in that  _ particular  _ way, or-or  _ any  _ of it, or- _

_ He reached for her, flickering blue fingertips just barely brushing against her shoulder. Her little flinch couldn’t have been in response to him, since he couldn’t actually touch anyone or alter events when he was in the vibes, but Cisco couldn’t stop himself from twitching in response. _

_ The door scraped open and Cisco covered his ears, squeezing his eyes shut as he heard Eiling’s familiar voice. “Asset 010, on your feet.” _

_ Reluctantly, Cisco opened his eyes, and he watched Bette slowly try to rise to her feet, ending up kneeling while leaning heavily against the wall. Eiling shook his head, and now Cisco turned to look at  _ him,  _ shaking a little. He’d seen Eiling’s face a million times in life and in nightmares, and it didn’t get any easier. _

_ Hardly daring to breathe, Cisco watched as guards unchained Bette from the wall and held her in between them. One of her ankles looked like it was twisted at a weird angle, and as it got dragged along the cement floor Bette screwed her face up in pain. Cisco’s stomach clenched. Can’t interfere, can’t interfere, can’t  _ help her  _ no matter how much he wants to. No matter how much he needs to. There’s nothing he can do. _

_ “You behaved adequately during your tests earlier,” Eiling said. Cisco wanted to rip his own skin off. Or maybe Eiling’s. He wasn’t entirely sure which. Maybe both. “We’re transferring you to a new cell.” He looked her up and down, disgust evident in his face. Bette didn’t even look up at him, but Cisco could see that her jaw was set into a harsh line and that her eyes were burning. Just like they would’ve if she were alive. “Someone will come to hose you off after you’ve been moved.” _

_ Cisco didn’t hear the next thing Eiling said. Just that it started with  _ “Handler Rathaway-”  _ and suddenly Cisco felt like he was going to vomit. He stumbled backwards and- _

-Slipped again, this time almost hitting his head on the edge of the bathtub. He vomited into it, unable to hold himself together as he sobbed. Bette. Handler Rathaway. Bette. Handler Rathaway. Handler Rathaway. Bette. Bette. Bette. Bette-

There hadn’t  _ been  _ any Handler Rathaways before, with Eiling, with  _ Bette,  _ there hadn’t  _ been- _ and they didn’t know where Hartley was and-and  _ he  _ was Handler Rathaway (why had he  _ lied  _ why had he  _ said  _ he wouldn’t hurt them and then  _ hurt Barry  _ and why had he  _ promised  _ he wasn’t a Handler but now he was-now he  _ was one  _ and he was hurting Bette and he had  _ told  _ Cisco that Bette was  _ dead  _ but then-) so-

Cisco, still wiping bloody vomit away from his lips as he tried to swallow the rest of it, ran downstairs, shouting Joe’s name. He’d  _ said  _ that they were supposed to tell him if-if something  _ bad  _ happened, if he thought Barry was going to get hurt, and this was rule breaking because as far as Cisco knew this wasn’t going to hurt  _ Barry  _ but-Hartley-and Eiling-and  _ Bette- _ and-and-

Cisco didn’t know if he believed in heaven or hell, but he’d hoped that Bette would at least end up in heaven.

From the way it had looked in the vibe, she hadn’t.

* * *

Burning. Burning. Burning. Burning. Burning. Burning. He was burning. Wasn’t he? No. Stop-wait. Wait. wait. What was going on? Where was he?  _ Who  _ was he? Burning. Burning. Burning.  _ Burning burning burning burning burning- _

His lungs ached, red hot pain lancing through his bones and making him stumble. Who was he? Who was he? Why was he burning? Who was he?

_ Think about where you come from. _

He couldn’t think. He could hardly see through the pain, hands that weren’t his grasping at his hair. The sleeves might’ve once been striped (hadn’t he stolen the shirt? No, no, he was a good person-a good man, a good man, a good man), but they were so grimy with dirt that it was nearly impossible to tell.

Striped. Stripes. Stripes were important, weren’t they? They were supposed to be important. He was supposed to know something about them. Something  _ big.  _ Something he  _ had  _ to remember,  _ had to had to had to through the burning pain- _

Stripes. Clarissa. _ Clarissa! _

No. Stop. No. Stop. No. Stop. No. Stop. No. Stop.

_ Think about where you come from. _

No. Stop. It burns. He can’t think. Whose eyes are these, the ones that he’s looking out of? They’re not his. He’s sure they’re not his. He needs glasses, doesn’t he? Doesn’t he need glasses? Why isn’t he wearing them? Clarissa would know. Wouldn’t she? No, stop, don’t think about her. You’re not supposed to go to her.  _ You’ll burn her too. Like you burnt-like you burnt- _

He can’t think of any more names. Just hers. Like a tornado in his brain, a hurricane that rocks him to his core. He’s so warm-his skin is hot to the touch, he’s pretty sure, and it smokes and sizzles in the cold night air. Hot, hot, hot, hot, hot enough to  _ burn,  _ hot enough to hurt people. People like Clarissa. People like-

People like-

_ Caitlin.  _

That’s a name. He’s heard it before, he’s pretty sure. He mumbles it to himself as he tries to stand, pitching forward as his leg goes out from under him the second he tries to put weight on it. He feels like he’s drunk-except he’s not drunk, is he? He feels like he is but he’s  _ not.  _ Red wine-he remembers red wine, red like blood, red like embers-at dinner.

“Clarissa,” he whispers, voice cracking from disuse as he speaks.  _ “Clarissa.” _

It’s an important name. He’s sure it’s an important name. It must be for it to be branded into his mind, seared there like it’s something worth remembering. Clarissa and Lily and stripes. Lily? Lily’s a new name, a new face to hover in his brain and twist his thoughts around and-no. Stop.

_ Think about where you come from. _

He can’t think about them. He can’t. Clarissa. Lily. Caitlin. Aren’t they supposed to be his people? There’s something on fire in his chest. Something hurts inside of there, and for a moment he grasps at his heart, numb fingers fumbling for something that’s not there. Something that will help him make sense of all of this. But there’s nothing. Nothing can help him.

He knows, suddenly, with a burning certainty-although it might not be certainty. All of him feels as if it is burning, from his tongue to his toes-that he brought this upon himself. 

Hot. Are his hands supposed to be this hot? He feels like he’s on fire, like his skin is crawling around on his muscles and he throws up bile and blood and mucus onto the ground in front of him. He’s dying. He’s dying. He’s trapped in this body that isn’t his and he’s dying and-and all of a sudden, he can’t remember why he had to stay away from Clarissa. Away from Clarissa and Lily. What would happen if he didn’t? What would happen?

_ Think about where you come from. _

Martin Stein sets his jaw, closes his eyes, and sets off in the direction of his wife’s house, leaving melted tar footsteps in his wake.


End file.
